In fact, I'd say that pugging can ruin missions altogether. The whole concept behind the game is not one of "I'm going to create a character, get powerful, and then do things with other people so that I can get more powerful", the concept is one of "I'm going to get together with other people, and together, we're going to do things that will make each other stronger as a group."
It isn't until you abandon the mentality of "6 people doing a mission" and become "a group doing a mission" that you can understand and enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played.
The problem with this type of design is that many people play the game for themselves. People will log on and view their playtime as "What can I accomplish today?" or "What items am I going to get today?"; they view missions as "I need 5 people to help me with this". These are all self-centric viewpoints and they are the reason for most failures in most MMORPGs. All of the problems you will ever have in any MMORPG trace back to selfishness. Either you were being selfish or someone else was. I'm not saying that you need to exist to serve everyone else, or that you have to be totally selfless or you're a horrible person, but in a game that is so strongly designed around the idea of people working together to accomplish a common goal, not "me and 5 other people"; once you get past "I need five people to help me" and think in terms of "The six of us are helping each other"... that's when you play the game the way it was intended. And that's when you can truly start to enjoy it.
I'd venture that most of the people who didn't enjoy Promathia missions either didn't enjoy it because they themselves were self-centric in thought and action, or because they frequently grouped with people that were. People who show up unprepared, people who are impatient and in a rush... If you never made it through CoP due to one group failure after another, I'm sure there is some way that you can connect the idea that the group was disjointed from the start. Either someone wasn't pulling their weight or was expecting others to compensate for them, or people were just screwing around.
Now I'm not saying "everyone who failed CoP is selfish"; chances are, it probably wasn't you at fault. But if you're one of the people who busted their ass and still couldn't succeed in CoP, I'm sure that if you look aback on your failures, you'll see that the cause of failure, despite all of your hard work, time, and effort, was ultimately the attitudes and actions of one or more self-centric party members that you did the missions with. Maybe someone bailed on your static because "We're not progressing fast enough and my other friend is doing to let me come with them" or maybe it's someone who always showed up half naked; people who didn't want to farm BC items like animas and mistmelts; people who ran way ahead of the group because they CBA to wait... any of it.
You can't drive a car when all four wheels aren't working together and turning together. If one of the wheels suddenly decides it wants to slack off and turn slower, or if one of the wheels decides the other three are moving too slow and decides to speed up... your transportation will be thoroughly unenjoyable, and it WILL fail.
The biggest problem with people as a whole in MMORPGs, and I'll concede that at times this applies to me as well, is that they tend to keep thinking about the mountains in the distance and miss all the flowers they're stepping on. If you spend all your time focusing on the goal, you'll never be able to enjoy the trip there.
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Arygos ServerEilemia 80 Warrior/Acriel 80 Warlock/Khaedra 80 Hunter
Mikhalia | Elvaan Female | Carbuncle
WHM75/BLM75/MNK75/BRD75/DRG75
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