Hot join in itself is not a bad idea. The problem is that it’s meant to allow newer players a place to practice without pressure, a place that’s a little less competitive and with less steamrolling going on. But this is not the case.
Hot join is filled with rank 30-50 experienced players that steamroll new players, and together with the 8vs8 making the maps really crowded, new players die like flies. Ironically hot join currently is harder to survive at than tournaments.
The reason this happens is experienced players are grinding glory, which is much easier to come by in hot join than in tournaments. 8vs8 means you can get more kills with AoE, and there isn’t the 20% dead time between matches which tournaments suffer from.
I think Hot join can still be good by making a few changes:
- Turn 8 vs 8 into 6 vs 6. The 8 is there to allow for less pressure on groups that are missing a player. But honestly 6 vs 6 should be enough for that, games rarely miss more than one or two players, and the maps are too small for 8 vs 8 to work well.
- Give players +50% glory bonus while in tournaments to make sure hot join is not so much better for earning glory than tournaments.
- Solve the 20% dead time between tournament matches issue, mostly caused by people refusing to press ‘I am ready!’ at the start of rounds.
I think with this changes people might actually love hot join for what it is instead of viewing it as a necessary dumb glory grind.
Liuli – Mesmer – Piken Square