Posts Tagged ‘lazy puggers’

29
Jul

Are You A Dungeon Tourist?

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Adventures In Azeroth, Adventures In Outland, Adventures While Healing, Adventures While Raiding, Adventures in PUGs

Doing Pick Up Groups like I so often do to accomplish my goals, I get to see a lot of interesting player habits.

And sure, every player is unique, everyone is special. But each of us who are unique and special still have a billion traits that can be “categorized” even if the whole person cannot accurately be.

Let’s talk about the trait of being a Tourist in a dungeon group.

What Is A Dungeon Tourist?

In short, a Dungeon Tourist is a player who feels compelled to be at the front of the party - generally in front of the Tank before the pull is done.

A Dungeon Tourist will decide without notice to head down a hallway that the Tank is not heading down, just to see what’s over there, or to mine a node or pick a flower that’s spawned.

Generally, what they find in their short journey is a mob that starts to attack them, and the squishier they are, the more panicked they are when they ask for help.

How Can You Detect A Dungeon Tourist?

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to detect a Dungeon Tourist immediately.

They don’t wear loud shirts, they’re not carrying cameras, and they come along WITH you into the instance instead of already being there when you arrive. In short, they look just like everyone else in your group, and with your hopefulness of a successful run, you might even think them a “good player” by looking at their spec or gear.

The only way to truly know you’ve got a Dungeon Tourist on your hands is to watch their behavior during the instance:

- Do they stand behind the tank before the pull?
- Do they get hurt regularly yet do negligable damage compared to others who are not getting hurt?
- Do they regularly move up and past the tank before thinking about restoring mana or health between pulls?

Tactfully Handling Tourists

Most Tourists, I’ve found, are young players behind the keyboard.

To them, the game is still new and exciting, and the fact that they’re in a dungeon group, or in this particular instance, makes it even more exciting. Team play is quite a bit different than Soloing or Pairing up with a friend, after all.

These tourists generally are well-meaning, and can be coached into altering habits - at least for one run - with a friendly person to give them a tip or two they find useful.

The most useful way I’ve found to tactfully pull most Tourists back is to appeal to their hope of not dying during the run. Simply saying “PlayerName, please wait behind the tank for us to go, if you aggro something, you’re pretty squishy” works most of the time, at least for that pull.

Reminding is easy too - “Hey Squishy, let the tank go through first :)”

Handling Stubborn Tourists

Some Tourist-types are stubborn, unfortunately. Thankfully it’s a small percentage of them the higher level you get - and certainly once you hit Outland instances, they’re almost non-existent.

Stubborn ones might hang back once or twice, but in general, as soon as there’s a corner they can’t see around or a node they can mine or pick, they’re off without a second thought. And again, aggro’ing something as a reward for their lack of foresight.

The best way I’ve seen to handle these types of tourists is to simply not assist the battle if they’ve done it too many times. Let them die as part of their education.

Even if they can get a quick resurrect from a party member, their actions will cost them two ways:

- Repairs
- A blow to the ego that the party members won’t run in like Mommy and Daddy to save them.

Even if it means the rest of the party WAS put into combat and DO have to kill what was aggro’d after the first guy bites it, I still recommend this strategy. Even if the player leaves the party in protest, I’ll bet your group will be the better for it, and unless you’ve got 2-3 OTHER weak players in your group, most pre-Outland instances can be 4-manned without many problems.

Tell Me About Your Adventures With Dungeon Tourists

I’d love to hear about your adventures with Dungeon Tourists - whether they be in PUGs or guild runs, or whatever.

I know of a casual raiding guild that has raid-based financial punishments for Dungeon Tourists, charging them a certain amount of gold every time they get part of the raid killed for their Touristism, and I think that’s both great and hilarious.

What do you think?

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28
Jul

If you want to know your DPS, get a meter!

   Posted by: WoWGrrl    in Adventures In Outland, Adventures While Healing, Adventures While Raiding, Adventures in PUGs

Y’know what?

I like knowing something that someone else wants to know but doesn’t know.

And while I do like to help people and share things I’ve learned, I like it even more when the asker COULD know what they wanted, if they did something simple, but they choose not to take the action required.

“Does anyone have a DPS meter?” Is one of those questions that gives me cruel pleasure.

Pleasure for two reasons: Yes, I have a DPS meter, but no, I’m not going to admit it to you nor share the results of it. If someone else does, that’s their decision, but I won’t do it, not even for friends.

Turning Annoyance Into Pleasure

I’ll admit, I didn’t always feel this pleasure… It used to really annoy me, and I’d frequently say “if you want to know the meters, install them…” but that just served to escalate my own annoyance when the person ultimately responded something confirming just how lazy they really were, and how much they expected others (complete strangers!) to enable their laziness. And of course, they didn’t feel guilty about this at all.

But, at some point in trying to feel good feelings more often than bad, I switched the way I looked at the situation and now find myself feeling pleasure about having knowledge that someone too lazy to get it themselves wants, and purposely withholding it.

According to the works of Esther Hicks (which are odd in some parts but very interesting and helpful in others if you’re into the self-help/”how to live a joyous life” genre of books), I moved from Irritation to Pessimism, which is a step UP the ladder towards Joy and Appreciation and Empowerment, and away from the bottom of the ladder of Fear, Grief, Depression and Powerlessness.

Am I Being Mean?

Yes, it’s true, it could be labelled “not nice” behavior, but I tell ya - I do this in other relationships as well, without guilt: I withhold certain types of information that someone could easily gather themselves if it were truly valuable information to them.

Why? Because I’ve learned that if I just GIVE them the answer they seek, I teach them they don’t need to take responsibility for what they want to acquire/learn - they can rely on the organization or knowledge of others to get what they want. And worse, if they’re someone I run into often, the more answers I give, the more they depend upon me as the source of their answers.

Oops, did I just twist my body while doing a little shrug? Is that why you’re on the floor? Oh, I’m sorry. Looks like you’d better get up, as we’re moving forward.

Funny Who Asks For Posting Of Meters…

I do find it interesting, tho, that the person asking for the DPS meters is either right on top on my charts, or way down at the bottom. Very few of them are in between. Maybe those people have meters and are striving, or maybe they just don’t care?

Do you have some type of damage meter installed and running when you do an instance or a raid?

Or did you take offense to my attitude above, because you’re one of those who cares about the meters but doesn’t have them installed for whatever reason? :)

(and yes, I know some people’s computers are too slow to run many addons. In my mind, a crappy computer is not a valid excuse for relying on complete strangers in a PUG, or even your “buddies” in a Raiding guild. RL friends, that’s up to you.)

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