Why not form a premade?

NT

In the small NZ/AUS commnity if someone was to form a serious premade the rest of the players in the community would find it hard to compete, i think there is an unspoken agreement not to do this. (For this reason we do need PUG friendly loby features.)

I would like to be part of a premade group but i would be limited to playing against the us west coast and central before lag would affect gameplay.

I would think there could be added committment and pressure being involved in a premade team but i still do think this a valid reason to want to play in pugs over premade teams if you are able to find a resonable number of premades to play against.

As a player in an unusual location, I found it hard to make a premade with people whom I could actually play with for any real amount of time. This issue is further frustrated by the difficulty of even getting a PUG match going, particularly with the problems I had wherein I could only play 2v2's. So any one of those could be the issue for some PUG players.

coz im playing hon instead

Maybe you should explain first what you consider "forming a premade team".

in my case the answer is simple: i cannot be reliable online. if i see friends ingame i prefer joining them but that's all.

secondly the infrastructur fucks me up. if there would be a possibility to register friends as team member so to start a game directly as a team and having the possibility to have more than one team, then maybe i would use it. but in the current state it is a pug game and i treat it as a pug game.

I have been a pugger since the first day of this game.

By premade, I mean those who purposely join together in a game, team on same side and share a communication out-game such as ventrilo or similar voice program.

In my general opinions, good ethic premade people don't play against pugs. Because if they choose to do so (other than the reason of lack of other premade), they plan to ruin other people's fun for personal satisfaction. They would belong among the worse kind of videogame players along side with the immature 13 years old kid who is a bit skilled and badmouth 24h/day about it. And I'd avoid them if possible because, like the kid, they think they are right about what they do and saying their one-simple sentence "It's just a game".

So with that philosophy, I don't need to form a premade, and because I am casual. Premade need to be on the same time play range, which is fairly hard for me. Sometimes I play at 12am-2am, other time I play 4pm to 8pm. I also play from 7am to 10am on occasion.

On another side, I respect the premaders that warn in their game title about the pre-team. I cannot say the same about those who don't. Once, I thought that people in premade are playing as such because they were not good as a lone player. They need the support of another to be decent. Perhaps it was true at first. But eventually, some are fed up by common pugs stupidity.

Anyway, premade... just don't go against pugs. Let me kill them instead. Pugs are for pugs. Period.

you don't have to be reliable.  You can log on and off whenever you want... this isn't world of warcraft.. you can play a couple games and leave.  You don't have guild members who can't move on without you being there... your friends can play without you.  Hell.. pacov is 90% of the time afk.. he might play 2 games at 2 p.m. then another 2 games at 11 p.m.   Yet we still play with him (or rather.. he graces us with his presence).

How is this a pug game if so many people constantly complain about premades?  Sounds like premades exist.  Also.. 'premade' is thrown around a lot.. let me simplify it:  You have 1-4 other people on vent playing with you and you can communicate over voice OR else you've played with them so many times w/out voice you know what they will do.  There is no routine practice you have to do.. no set in stone rules you have to abide by.  You generally develope a feel for how other people play the more you are around them.. but the main thing is communication.  "hey can anyone teleport onto this guy?" "how much mana / gold do you have?" "snipe ___ plz" "ub is target; now oak is; switch back to ub wtf is he doing?! lol ub dead, keep on oak.  Pushing oak.  Okay I have to drop back.. almost dead, don't extend unless you can kill w/out me"  ETC.  Things you just don't have the time to type in chat.  That's it.  There is no special magic behind being a premade, unless you think actually communicating with teammates is magic.

There is a FREE public vent which you can hop in and tell your friends to hop in. chi05.hurricanehost.com, port : 4636 , no password

I don't quite understand what you mean about the infrastructure.  You can start every game as a team by hosting a lobby, having them join, and BAM.. you're on a team.  Or, see a lobby that you know is premade (either by title or the person hosting) and ask them if they want to play you (could be a 5/6 lobby.. just send 1 representive, "hey do u guys want to play my premade?" if yes, they will kick the other 2 out so your friends can join. I gladly do this when I host premades).

I don't mean any of this to come off as hostile.  I just don't understand it either.. as pacov said.  I see no reason not to do it.. I pugged around too.. found friends who played when I played.. whenever that was.  If they logged off, I found other friends who played around that time.  You've got to find good people sometimes when you pug around amirite?

oh, thought I'd comment on Zoahr's post first.  PLEASE STOP DA HATE!

God damn .. "kill the premades" "down with premades" "premades can go fuck themselves" "premades you can't play anyone except that other premade that isn't on at the moment" "premades we hate you, but gimme one of your players and I'll think about it" "premades you all suck and the only reason you win is cuz your on voice but i refuse to go onto voice for (insert shitty reason here)"

Don't really feel like playing this game much anymore.. small player base.. and the people who play often end up knowing each other.. group up, and then are hated by the rest.  HOORAY 45 minutes of sitting in a lobby as a team, in a team based game, that was made with the idea of teams playing, having 7 people join and leave the lobby.  Most of the time these people already know who you are anyway.  Or someone who's 100 games played, 51% wins sit in the lobby, KNOWS who we are and that we're a premade.. sees 2 other people join the lobby with better stats than him, and complains that his team can't win this.  Sorry I enjoy playing this game :/

Please, have the time to read and finish my post before flaming me off. Too quick to jump to conclusions?

Besides, the topic's author did not want to start a war, he asked a question and I answered it. If you want games, why don't you just go in on some random games? Be a pugs and lose some games. Be frustrated, like I am many times, about people's stupidity. I plainly play about 4-5 games before getting off, which is great.

You cannot ignore there is a pugs community. Join them for a while or simply wait in your lobby for premade games.

Don't flame. I do hate incognito premaders, but I do respect many others. Unfortunately, you are not one of them. Why? Because of the quotes.

yes its a team game and yes premade propably is the way the game is meant to be played. i personally have nothing against premades in general. but you have to adjust to the circumstances which means: most people are not in a premade and the games infrastructure doesnt make it easy to play with the same guys regularly. the friendslists functionality is at best rudimentary and there is no "waiting room". so you have to put some effort into gathering mates. something i so far didnt think of being worthwhile. also because most people are not in a premade it wouldnt be fair to play pugs as a full stacked team. last pc-game i intensively played was counterstrike. there were clanwars and public server. it was very rare that a whole clan-team joined one side on a pub. if they did the server would have been empty after minutes and so - even if they were on vent or ts - the team split up!

thats what isnt happening here! i know that you like to play together and you can do it if you want but on a public server you should have the decency to split up. man its just for half an hour or so. i.e. if you are a team of 4 players you can easily split up into two pairs and still have some good teamwork. for three its more difficult but for the sake of fairness... its a game. doesnt every gamer complain that playing games should be seen as sport? in the local badminton club i play in we never had a discussion like that because it was clear, it was so fucking no question what to do when there were the 2 best playing with the 2 worst players. they teamed up 1 good 1 bad against 1 good and 1 bad player. i dont talk about tournaments. i talk about a regular free play game. shurely the good team trained like 5/6 of the time with the mates of their own liga-team and played matches in their regular matchup (against the second team of the liga-team) but if they took part at free play they split up and they had not the least frackin problem with it.

but whats worse: sometimes there are 3 premades or "half premades" (people who just play often together) online. each hosting an own game! why dont they join each others games?

so what i want to say with all of the words: if these are real quotes rawrrr imo its not because they "hate" premades. now i would like to say its not personal but it propably is. they dont hate the concept of "premade". they just dont like most of the premade members attitude!

@RAWRRRR

1. your pretensions to a premade member are a bit different to mines

2. people complain so much over premades that in most cases even do not are premades. as soon as a player starts using his brain, seeing a team member in trouble and porting in to help i usually see people scream PREMADE! HE TOLD YOU YOU SHOULD PORT. YOU ARE USING VENT OR TS.

damn it i get called 10 times a week premade being in a team i know none of the members.

there aren't as many premades as they complain about. you palyed with a guy sometime or two times. you get into his team by accident another day. you beat out the hell of the opponents and they yell PREMADE.

i rarly see premades. very rare.

edit: up till now i never used any voice chat in dg. but this will change. i convinced a rl friend to join us. maybe i get a second one to join. but i dont expect them to become top players. but as they are friends i will have fun playing with them and screaming into the mic "GET THE FUCKING FLAG YOU MORON..... peace :P"

Its really not worth your time to go out of your way to form a "premade". For all the reasons above most specifically including time available and the complete lackluster online Demigod system.

People just have to "learn" how to play as a team, regardless of who they are playing with. It seems that the average "pugger" thinks, that it's ok if he plays on it's own and doesn't care what his other teammembers are doing. If everyone would keep teamplay in mind this "premade problem" wouldn't be so much a problem for those people at all...

totaly agree with you spooky__

but it seems most people think this is only possible using voice chat. open your eyes and always carry a tp-scroll with you

I agree with you Spooky.  The problem is that 1 weak player or ragequitter can easily ruin a game.

Having more premades would make this game a lot better for everyone.

Too bad Clans was pushed to a lower priority.

j

RAWRRRR has had the best advice so far....

This is literally a one-time 5-minute set-up process.  After that it takes anywhere from 3 to 4 seconds to launch ventrillo before starting DG.  There is a "Waiting for a game"  lobby available right on this free (thanks CalltheVoid) server.  As people pop in they can say things like:

"Hey, do you want to get a game of Demigod going?" 
"Yes. I would like that." 
"O.K. I will start a game."
"Cool.  I will join your game."
"WoW!  Now we are pre-made :)"

Should it happen that 4 or 6 or 8 people jump in at the same time...  they can form TWO pre-made teams!
They can even use the online statistical data to "balance" the "pre-made" "teams". Neat!
OR
They could even wait for PuG's to join the lobby and recruit THEM onto the vent server.  Holy Cow!

I have played many of my games as non-ventrillo but more recently I have used this server.  I hve no set "pre-made" team of players but I do have fun.  Much more fun now that we can communicate.  Still, communication is not the magic bullet.  We still lose at times (actually, if you are balancing the teams you SHOULD be losing roughly half the time).  Players who have played more games (and who pay attention) seem to fare better...

I feel that playing this way has helped me to become better at this team based game.  In the past I will say that I was focusing on the wrong thing:  myself.  After getting beaten by better players (as well as playing vent games with better players) I have seen where a team focus wins out every time.  I implore all twelve of you to try this method and work on improving communication in each game...  and try to bring in all of the hard-core "PuGers" out there...

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.  1^st, 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. 

1st of all i want to say that puggers sustain the community. without them, they would all be premades and it will be really difficult to start a game.

2nd, I am not a dedicated pugger myself. But i always pug at least 1 game, and play the rest with 1 friend usually. and i really like to have a random player in my team. sometimes i premade too.

But i want to say this;

The best games i have ever had are from pugging with totally random players in my team (i didnt know them). its exciting to play with new ppl and not to know if they are good or what.

and 3rd this is the reason i dont want to premade all the time.

Pugging is the best!

morph, gonna pug together later on?

You really don't know the answer to this?  Here are just a handful of reasons:

1. It takes a Pugger 3 minutes to get a game going and 20 minutes for a Premade.  Do I really want to sit in a lobby kicking people that cannot read the title for hours every night?  I premade with my brother and the nights where we get a 3rd to join us can be painful to find a game.  Once you have 3 you basically have to host, which means very long wait times.
   
2. Not everyone can be online for hours at a time.  There are lots of nights that I get on for just 1 or 2 games.  I am not going to wait around for my premade to show up.  Other nights I can be on for longer.
   
3. It's a real pain in the ass to get people onto vent, when some people do not even know what vent is.  Look how difficult your vent XvX games were to get people on vent, and this assumes people even have a vent server to log onto.  It took us over 30 minutes to get Cowbuttz into our vent lobby so we could play one game.
   
4. Premades that don't win don't stay together.  People get pissed at each other and move on.  How many premades can you name that a) aren't family or rl friends and have a win rate less than 60%.  I can't name a single one.
5. There is no real clan system in DG that makes being part of a group easy.  In WIC you can throw out a clan invite to get someone new as part of the "inner circle."  No such thing in DG.  There just aren't any clan functions.

That's just a handful of reasons that took 30 seconds to think up.  There is always going to be a large part of the population that flies solo.

The better question is why do premades not play premades?  I can log into DG right now and I bet there will be at least 3 games that are 3/6 Cataract, where the 3 in each game are a premade.  I always find that a bit comical.

They do.  Mine does any way.  And not a better question, IMO, for my thread on the question "Why the hell don't you form a premade?"  Quite possibly even off topic. 

But some good points though and thanks for those. 

Why don't I premade instead of pug?

1. I'm seldom online at the time my friends are.

2. I don't play for long enough bouts when my friends are online in order to be waiting in the lobby at the same time they are, and I don't really have the time to sit idle and wait.

3. It's more interesting to play a game with randoms vs randoms, for me anyway.

I don't have anything against premade teams. They are unfair only if they try to hide the fact they are premade. That said, I have occasionaly beat down premades when I was on a team of pugs.

Pacov,

Honestly I don't know why people don't. I haven't played in nearly a month, but I have a friend's list. So when I hopped on for a few games I just joined up with some people on my friend's list and got some good games (also I found that tagging along with the better players ensured that the games didn't have noobs in them). I think a lot of it is just that people need to (and don't) use the friend's list. You hop on, check your list, if someone's available then join up, otherwise make sure you do stat checks in lobby. I pug ~80-90% of the time but I have never found it hard to join a group of people, if nothing else just for a game or two.

Really, people just need to use the Friend's list functionality more and be willing to wait a minute or two. If you don't want to wait at all, you have to be ok with playing by yourself with other puggers.

Unlike other MMO's where there are guilds etc, I didn't find one over here.  Sometimes I play alot, then sometimes I don't.  I didn't know there was a free vent server, I might go check it out.  I suppose the biggest issue there isn't a tool that easily allow people to form groups.  Most MMO's have built in guild features.  DG could benifiet of doing something similar.  

I think having built in game tools would drastically help this.