History Main / PickUpGroup

* In the ''Anime/LuckyStar'' OVA, Ms. Kuroi forms a party with Konata and the Hiiragi twins, and one conversation is about [=PUGs=], including the quality of group you can get, and how sometimes you can't get into a group and have to play solo, possibly because all the [=LFGers=] are the same class.

-->-- ''[[http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/2008/01/deal-or-no-deal.html GM Dave]], Bannable Offenses''

....or rather, you are rewarded with several people who were bored enough to game with the first thing that walks on two legs. If they're ''really'' picky, then they're bored enough to game with the first Level 654 Munchkin that walks on two legs. In either case, the bar for entry is low, and you get what you paid for: SturgeonsLaw.

* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}''[='=]s online multiplayer defaults to this, plunking you on a four-person team with three other random people. While this isn't a big deal in Turf War, where each person can act independently and losses don't really hurt you, it can be a pain in Ranked Battles, which can sometimes require more coordination and support between teammates to complete the objectives than basic signals like "This Way!" can give. Fortunately, this is also true of the teams that you're facing. The Squad Battles mode in ''VideoGame/Splatoon1'' and League Battle mode in ''Splatoon 2'' exist for those who want to play ranked with friends against other squads, and in ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'', every mode sans X Battle and the series variant of Anarchy Battle allows you to play with friends (while filling out any remaining slots with randoms).

* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}''[='=]s online multiplayer defaults to this, plunking you on a four-person team with three other random people. While this isn't a big deal in Turf War, where each person can act independently and losses don't really hurt you, it can be a pain in Ranked Battles, which can sometimes require more coordination and support between teammates to complete the objectives than basic signals like "This Way!" can give. Fortunately, this is also true of the teams that you're facing. The Squad Battles mode in ''VideoGame/Splatoon1'' and League Battle mode in ''Splatoon 2'' exist for those who want to play ranked with friends against other squads, and in ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'' almost every mode always you to play with friends (while filling out any remaining slots with randoms).

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}''[='=]s online multiplayer defaults to this, plunking you on a four-person team with three other random people. While this isn't a big deal in Turf War, where each person can act independently and losses don't really hurt you, it can be a pain in Ranked Battles, which can sometimes require more coordination and support between teammates to complete the objectives than basic signals like "This Way!" can give. Fortunately, this is also true of the teams that you're facing. The Squad Battles multiplayer mode does exist for those who want to play ranked with friends against other squads, thankfully.

* By virtue of denying dedicated realtime communication, both ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' use PUG every time. While co-oping is strictly optional, a large playerbase dedicated solely as support can and has sprung up in both games. Also due to the NintendoHard nature of the game, experienced players that know what to do in any situation makes for a valuable ally. Of course, you do sometimes get stuck with a LeeroyJenkins or two along the way.

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}''[='=]s online multiplayer defaults to this, plunking you on a four-person team with three other random people. While this isn't a big deal in Turf War, where each person can act independently and losses don't really hurt you, it can be a pain in Ranked Battles, which require more coordination and support between teammates to complete the objectives. Fortunately, this is also true of the teams that you're facing. A later update added Squad Battles, where you can play ranked mode with friends against other squads.

You're playing a MMORPG, and you decide that you need a group of people to take on the next dungeon/mission/area/cake.... but all of your friends are either offline or clinically dead. What's a player to do? Never fear, you can find a '''Pick Up Group''' to play with! After shouting things like "LVL 654 {{M|unchkin}}UNCHKIN LFG!" for five minutes or so, you will be rewarded with an Adventuring Party to kill things with! [[note]]LFG, for those not in the know, means "Looking For Group." (No, not [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything that]] way. Get your mind out of the gutter. Not [[Webcomic/LookingForGroup the comic, either]].)[[/note]]

Gaming with a Pick Up Group works just fine for the earlier missions of a game, because it doesn't get difficult until later. But at some point, the missions will require carefully-built characters, everyone knowing what the rest of the group is good at, and maybe, just maybe, ''communication''. Pick Up Groups are not known for any of these things. Once you start entering challenging dungeons with a Pick Up Group, expect a TotalPartyKill, possibly helped along by a LeeroyJenkins who rushes in and aggros everything.

** Part of the reason for the generally low quality of pick up groups in [=WoW=] is that the ''good'' players tend to form guilds and run dungeons with their fellow guild members, leaving the players who are unable or unwilling to join quality guilds to haunt the [=LookingForGroup=] channel. This is not always the case, of course, but the whole point of a Pick-Up Group is that there's no guarantee that the players you meet in one will be even slightly competent. On the other hand, a very good way to find a quality guild in the first place is to fill in an empty party/raid slot and perform well.

** These days, much of the utility of voice chat in online FPS seems to be to complain of team stacking. However, games that offer smooth integrated voice support like ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' seem, unsurprisingly, to do much better than those without.
* [[ThatOneLevel Positron's Task Force]]... the bane of ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' players everywhere before it was redesigned and split into two separate Task Forces.

** There isn't really anything that a Pick Up Group cannot beat in ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', even the Lord Recluse and Statesman Task Forces, as long as the members are willing to ''communicate'', and are willing to at least give cursory attention to making sure the team has decent support, damage, and durability. (Leeroying didn't have -near- the stigma in Cities as it does elsewhere, mainly because it actually ''worked'')
*** Leeroying was so much of a not-problem that a common phrase bandied about was "[=WoW=] has Leeroy Jenkins as a player. We have it as an ''[[CharacterClassSystem Archetype]].''"[[note]]Referring to the Scrapper class, though the Brute also applied.[[/note]]

* ''VideoGame/WarhammerOnline'' gets special note for having an open party system. That's right, no need to spam LFG channels, just form an open party and literally take whoever comes your way. This is generally done only for open field [=PvP=], where there is no limit on how many players each side may have, so simply zerging is a valid strategy, if an inefficient one. Interestingly class composition is rarely a major issue since law of big numbers dictates that if you form up a 24 man warband you're likely to get a reasonable sample of the game's population distribution among classes anyway, probably giving you enough healers to be ok. Nevertheless pick up groups are massively inefficient compared to organized guild groups, and at absolute best it will take about twice as many members in a PUG group to accomplish what a guild group on vent would do - i.e. a 6 man of competent players who know each other can easily overcome a 12 man PUG, and often times a full 24 man warband. Still, it's a good feature for casual play.

* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'' both teams are random {{Pick Up Group}}s (unless clans get involved) of approximately the same strength. Works just as fine as you would expect. Rarely one team gets a tactical genius, who shines so brightly that his team starts following his orders; then the other team is screwed. Or one team gets a platoon of good players who work together, this results in a massive slaughter. Or entirely too often the matchmaking software builds two teams that are wildly unbalanced (like a Tier 10 match where one side has mostly Tier 10 tanks and the other side has mostly Tier 8 tanks.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has spades of this due to the game catering specifically to pick up groups. All it takes is one person not doing their job or not paying attention during the battle, especially the tank or the healer, to [[TotalPartyKill wipe]]. Thankfully, the playerbase is notably friendlier than that of other [=MMOs=] for the most part; as long as a newbie is up-front about their status and is willing to learn, the more experienced players are willing to teach. This is incentivized by a small bonus reward for taking a player on their first run through a piece of content. Most content in the game is simple enough for a PUG to get through with some effort, but harder content requires more finesse and communication. For a while, The Coil of Bahamut (the original raid content) wasn't even open to [=PUGs=] at all due to said content catering towards pre formed parties who knew their roles.

* A necessary component of the MMORPG ''VideoGame/MapleStory''. In game, there are many repeatable "Party Quests" that can only be tackled with a group of 4 or more. While its not rare for friends ingame to team up with one another to tackle said quests, its far more common that the average player will simply head to the location of the Party Quest giver and ask to be let into a party/form a party and recruit others nearby. However, most of them will have performed said party quests a dozen times over, and the less patient ones will scorn newcomers because they cannot follow the "routine" of the quest.

* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfTanks'' both teams are random {{Pick Up Group}}s (unless clans get involved) of approximately the same strength. Works just as fine as you would expect. Rarely one team gets a tactical genius, who shines so brightly that his team starts following his orders; then the other team is screwed.
** Or one team gets a platoon of good players who work together, this results in a massive slaughter.

** If you get the Nightfall and/or Eye of the North expansions, you get heroes, which are NPC party-fillers that you can customize and equip yourself, basically letting you play the game as you would a single-player RPG. After years of player demand, you can now fill out the entire party with heroes. Certain high-end and PvP areas of the game disable partying with [=NPCs=] to require grouping with actual players.

* ''VideoGame/WarhammerOnline'' gets special note for having an open party system. That's right, no need to spam LFG channels, just form an open party and literally take whoever comes your way. This is generally done only for open field PvP, where there is no limit on how many players each side may have, so simply zerging is a valid strategy, if an inefficient one. Interestingly class composition is rarely a major issue since law of big numbers dictates that if you form up a 24 man warband you're likely to get a reasonable sample of the game's population distribution among classes anyway, probably giving you enough healers to be ok. Nevertheless pick up groups are massively inefficient compared to organized guild groups, and at absolute best it will take about twice as many members in a PUG group to accomplish what a guild group on vent would do - i.e. a 6 man of competent players who know each other can easily overcome a 12 man PUG, and often times a full 24 man warband. Still, it's a good feature for casual play.

* Notorious in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' in both PvP and PvE aspects:

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has spades of this due to the game catering specifically to pick up groups. All it takes is one person not doing their job or not paying attention during the battle that will cause the whole party to wipe. Experienced players won't tolerate newbies or clueless player and will chose to leave when possible. Most content in the game is simple enough for a PUG to get through with some effort, but harder content requires more finense and communication. For a while, the game's raid content (The Coil of Bahamut) wasn't even open to [=PUGs=] at all due to said content catering towards pre formed parties who knew their roles.

* Can be played straight or averted in ''Franchise/MetalGear Online''. As a shooter it deserves a mention because most of the game types are team based with a set team objective (Base Capture, Race, or Bomb Mission for example). Most of the time if you don't have a clan you join a game with whoever is online playing the game type you want. You lose hard if you don't work as a team, which tends to lead to a lot of 'lag switching n00b' comments. Heck, you get those comments from your opponents if you actually DO play as a team and win! Seems a lot of players don't get that MGO is more tactical than Call of Duty.

*** Leeroying was so much of a not-problem that a common phrase bandied about was "WoW has Leeroy Jenkins as a player. We have it as an ''[[CharacterClassSystem Archetype]].''"[[note]]Referring to the Scrapper class, though the Brute also applied.[[/note]]

-> Some poor bastard desperately needs/wants an item from a [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI BCNM]], an item he cannot afford to or is unable to purchase. Thus, the aforementioned poor bastard must organize a band of people he has never met before and trust them to not rip him off.
-> We call this a prick up group.

You're playing a MMORPG, and you decide that you need a group of people to take on the next dungeon/mission/area/cake.... but all of your friends are either offline or clinically dead. What's a player to do? Never fear, you can find a '''Pick Up Group''' to play with! After shouting things like "LVL 654 [[{{Munchkin}} MUNCHKIN]] LFG!" for five minutes or so, you will be rewarded with an Adventuring Party to kill things with! [[note]]LFG, for those not in the know, means "Looking For Group." (No, not [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything that]] way. Get your mind out of the gutter. Not [[Webcomic/LookingForGroup the comic, either]].)[[/note]]

** Much of this is because ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' is such a group intensive game, it is much harsher on people completely unable to play well in a group. There's is a sharp decline in completely incompetent players as you go from each "tier" of area to the next, since if someone is unable to even do basic actions, they will be incapable of pulling their weight. By the time you get to the 30s or so, you just simply won't encounter people that are unable to even bluff their way through partying. Sadly, the standards of skill that are required of a persistent player aren't quite that high, still often leading to bad players (it's now also possible to solo to 75 on some jobs now, with Fields of Valor and Campaign, but with the majority of the playerbase as veterans, [[{{Noob}} nooblets]] can still be sniffed out in seconds flat because of other events, not to mention the length of time it would take to solo to the level cap). In comparison, most {{MMORPG}}s that offer solo options tend to have a very gradual decline in players that lack party skills, oftentimes having people get to the level cap and are unable to fulfill their assumed role in a party setting.
* Notorious in ''WorldOfWarcraft'' in both PvP and PvE aspects:

** Part of the reason for the generally low quality of pick up groups in [=WoW=] is that the ''good'' players tend to form guilds and run dungeons with their fellow guild members, leaving the players who are unable or unwilling to join quality guilds to haunt the [=LookingForGroup=] channel. This is not always the case, of course, but the whole point of a PickUpGroup is that there's no guarantee that the players you meet in one will be even slightly competent. On the other hand, a very good way to find a quality guild in the first place is to fill in an empty party/raid slot and perform well.

* [[ScrappyLevel Positron's Task Force]]... the bane of ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' players everywhere before it was redesigned and split into two separate Task Forces.

* Semi-averted with ''VideoGame/{{EverQuest}}''. Although not as group-intensive as FFXI, it becomes increasingly difficult to solo at the higher levels (depending, of course, on character class). More averted back in the days when Verant Interactive ran the game, XP was twice as hard to gain, dying was much more of a punishment (your gear stayed on your dead body, and if you happened to bite it in a dangerous area or deep in a dungeon, you were SOL), and anti-twink measurements were taken. You learned how to work as part of a group or you quit playing.

* You will be playing like this for the most part in ''VideoGame/GrandChase''. Not an issue actually, unless you get "leechers"[[note]]people who join the dungeon run but do not fight and just go AFK and gain the LeakedExperience[[/note]] or just feel greedy and don't want to share item drops, as item distribution is random in a group. Though once you get around to [[ScrappyLevel Forest of Life]], you wished those nooblets would had become atleast half competent with their characters.

* ''WarhammerOnline'' gets special note for having an open party system. That's right, no need to spam LFG channels, just form an open party and literally take whoever comes your way. This is generally done only for open field PvP, where there is no limit on how many players each side may have, so simply zerging is a valid strategy, if an inefficient one. Interestingly class composition is rarely a major issue since law of big numbers dictates that if you form up a 24 man warband you're likely to get a reasonable sample of the game's population distribution among classes anyway, probably giving you enough healers to be ok. Nevertheless pick up groups are massively inefficient compared to organized guild groups, and at absolute best it will take about twice as many members in a PUG group to accomplish what a guild group on vent would do - i.e. a 6 man of competent players who know each other can easily overcome a 12 man PUG, and often times a full 24 man warband. Still, it's a good feature for casual play.

* ''PuzzlePirates'' is based almost exclusively on this. If you want people who aren't in your crew to help pillage, you need to assemble a pick-up group. Pillages quickly become luck of the draw, whether you get skilled players and are set to make a fortune on a pillage, or bad players, where the pillage costs you thousands of coins with no return. And the only real way to make the money back is more pick-up groups!

* ''GuildWars'' has two notable aspects regarding this. 1)It becomes damn-near impossible to solo play after a certain point (both for sheer difficulty, and the game actually telling you to put a group together). 2)The game provides certain archetype-filling [=NPCs=], if you can't (or don't want to) team with other players.

* Semi-averted with ''{{EverQuest}}''. Although not as group-intensive as FFXI, it becomes increasingly difficult to solo at the higher levels (depending, of course, on character class). More averted back in the days when Verant Interactive ran the game, XP was twice as hard to gain, dying was much more of a punishment (your gear stayed on your dead body, and if you happened to bite it in a dangerous area or deep in a dungeon, you were SOL), and anti-twink measurements were taken. You learned how to work as part of a group or you quit playing.
** Totally true, however, for ''EverQuestII''. In [=EQ2=], dying only loses you a modicum of exp that will regenerate anyway if you just take a break, and while grouping nets you better rewards it's by no means necessary to reach the End Game. Ironically, on the off-chance you end up in a good pickup group, you'll have friends for life.

* Thanks to ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}''[='=]s peer-to-peer mission hosting, this trope is pretty much inevitable. Recruiting chat can help you assemble a team that at least looks decent on paper, but it's hard to tell how good the team will be until the mission's already underway. For an even riskier approach, you can just set matchmaking to public and hop into any mission that doesn't require a key, letting the dice fall where they may. Of course, very few missions are difficult enough to necessitate an optimized team in the first place, so a bad random or two usually won't completely ruin your chance of success (unless it's a [[StealthBasedMisson Spy mission]]). Moreover, most of the missions that ''do'' require a high degree of coordination and planning also need a key to access, so you'll have to organize a party beforehand anyways.

* This causes massive issues in ''VideoGame/Warface'', where the best way to deal with the Co-op system is to pray that you get one or two decent players- and in the harder modes, like Tower Raid, anything less than 5 high ranked, experienced players with a full kit with result in a TotalPartyKill.

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'''s online multiplayer defaults to this, plunking you on a four-person team with three other random people. While this isn't a big deal in Turf War, where each person can act independently and losses don't really hurt you, it can be a pain in Ranked Battles, which require more coordination and support between teammates to complete the objectives. Fortunately, this is also true of the teams that you're facing. A later update added Squad Battles, where you can play ranked mode with friends against other squads.