The things you "hate" about I Trials!

That other game, the one with LFD and LFR, redefined it.

I've played that game, and a group of strangers assembled over 20 minutes is called a PUG there, too.

Carefully? Recruiting is usually done on a first come, first served basis

In LFD and LFR you don't get to pick who's in your group. You queue up and go. If it takes you 20 minutes to hit the join button, that's your problem.

It's grading rewards by difficulty, just like the 1-50 game does - once you start fighting grays, you stop getting any form of progress, so you have to find tougher enemies to continue your progress - or do you still rage when you hit level 10 in Atlas Park, and the evil devs force you to move to another zone to fight tougher enemeis if you want to progress further by taking away all ther ewards from the Atlas Park enemies?

That's what they're doing

If the greys in atlas park were actually red and could still kill me easily after they stopped giving XP, yeah, I might.

I'm redefining nothing. A Pick-up Group is a group that picks up whoever comes along. As opposed to cherry-picking by AT and/or Level/Level Shift. If it were a matter of being 'mostly strangers', nearly every group in every MMORPG would be a PUG and the term would be meaningless.

OK, I can accept that definition of a PUG for the moment. Let's look at the original point of contention regarding PUGs, then:
And hey, look, a league composed entirely of the first eligible people to come along does indeed have a good chance of succeeding on a trial (at least, on the easier ones), so those do indeed meet GGs definition of casual. UG tends to require more coordination, and more pickiness in forming the team, so that's not nearly as casual. I haven't done MoM and TPN enough to comment much on them.

But if that isn't your definition of casual, would you kindly clarify what you do mean by the word?

Edit: And all of this should not be mistaken for me defending the Incarnate trials. I'm sick to death of them and they represent lots of the things that drove me away from other MMOs. To me, though, their problem is not that they aren't casual.

Given your parenthetical exception, you are inherently conceding the point that iTrials aren't casual by GG's definition. I disagree with her definition of casual, though. "Casual", to me, means you can just jump right into it and it doesn't require an excessive amount of time to do. AT least some of them succeed on the latter point, but they all fail on the former.

Some of them aren't, by that definition, yes.

On a related note I certainly would not stay on a league for UG/Keyes/TPN or MoM if the leader informs us that they've never done it before, shortly after inviting us.

there's PUGs and then there's suicide.

EDIT: Also I've seen for the later 3 trials plenty of leaders asking for +2s and +3s. That's still a PUG, but is not really in the traditional sense of this game. And yeah I don't think a true PUG has a high likelyhood of success on the last 3 trials.

Well, what is going to motivate a person to bother with new content if they can use everything they've hoarded already to unlock all the new abilities right away? Nothing, really. They take the time to earn the iXP, if they don't just dump threads and inf to unlock them, then spend maybe 80 Emp merits to get all the components and stack up to T4 day 1. Then there's really no reason for them to continue playing the character, just sit them back on the shelf and wait for the next round of slot unlocks. Kind of defeats the purpose of giving people more things to do when they hit end game when they just hoard everything up from the older content.

them having more level 50s that need the abilities

Basically this. The devs make the first two trials completely capable of doing the work of unlocking Destiny/Lore, then wonder why no one feels motivated to do new stuff since they have to first Grind to +3 (the rares aren't the issue, its the sheer number of commons) in order to actually contribute against the +1 and +2 AVs. This isn't fun anymore - and it was BARELY fun to begin with.

...If I'm +3 I'm done with most characters, and if I'm not, I'm Leeching in the later trials.

My Squishy characters get demolished unless they took ONE SPECIFIC Ancillary/Patron shield, and my Melees get two shotted by the Vickies, while they have no difficulty tanking the AVs. It's just frustrating how the developers try to balance content and always go the route of "moar damage and tohit" rather than having unresistable damage (25-40%) and some actual thought on how the gimmicks will be received. ("Why dont they like easily griefable encounters, and a rez mechanic that destroys dreams?")

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Quoted for truth and emphasis. The entirety of this game is very casual, including the itrials.

The first 3, maybe - I personally liken a PuG UGT to playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun - you only win if the gun jams.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

When I see leaders asking for +3 and +2s on the last 3 trials, I don't consider that casual, no not really.

Yes but there will always be other players with new 50s. always.

Also the devs have said they intend to create more slots AFTER Omega.

The Incarnate system is never ending.

Yeah, and we'll probably need the first two Battalion Trials to unlock the next 4 Incarnate slots, still making UGT/TPN/MOM a waste of time for anyone not badging.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Yep. lol.

Or they could tack on xp dropping from them going to the new slots at 50X a rate.

All I know is I can't wait till Dark Astoria finally arrives.

Honestly? Unless the purple drop rate is higher I still won't be interested. All my toons who solo well are done pretty much, and my teamed based characters aren't much fun to play.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

That's the same as things like the TFs asking for certain ATs

No, it isn't.

Edit: Wait, TSF? What is a TSF? I'm guessing Task/Strike Force, but I've never seen anyone refer to that as TSF before so I'm suddenly uncertain.

If you're referring to Task Forces, those are far from casual either.