Guild Wars 2

4v5
4v5
4v5
4v5
4v5
4v5

/resign

Allie Murdock.8152:

Sorry, going to change your topic/thread a bit to remove the swearing because I don’t want it to be snagged by moderators.

I would like to know if you’re experiencing leavers (joining and then leaving), or if it is just that people don’t show up to the match at all.

Thanks!

It’s a mix of both for me. As well as some AFK at the start.

Most common is the fifth just not showing up.

K U T M.4539:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Sorry, going to change your topic/thread a bit to remove the swearing because I don’t want it to be snagged by moderators.

I would like to know if you’re experiencing leavers (joining and then leaving), or if it is just that people don’t show up to the match at all.

Thanks!

It’s a mix of both for me. As well as some AFK at the start.

Most common is the fifth just not showing up.

thats a problem of the algo.. sometimes leaving queue or game doesnt work to remove u from the queue.

It’s also map related. You’re going to see a lot more leavers on Skyhammer and Spirit Watch than other maps. There are also lag issues, especially on and following patch day for a few days.

It is really 3 areas:

1. People never showing up to the match
2. People disconnecting during the match
3. People standing at the spawn point the whole match

Most common is #1. Least common is #3.

style.6173:

It is really 3 areas:

1. People never showing up to the match
2. People disconnecting during the match
3. People standing at the spawn point the whole match

Most common is #1. Least common is #3.

1. problem of not removing player from queue
2. lags or loosing
3. too long waittimes so the ppl is browsing youtube or something else and hasnt noticed

for 1. u can test it yourself. enter soloq/ teamq and leave game after a while.. reenter at some point later and u get “teamcomp not found” as errormessage. the same is sometime if u leave soloq

Allie Murdock.8152:

Sorry, going to change your topic/thread a bit to remove the swearing because I don’t want it to be snagged by moderators.

I would like to know if you’re experiencing leavers (joining and then leaving), or if it is just that people don’t show up to the match at all.

Thanks!

The problem is less about people physically leaving the match than that many people will go afk at respawn if the match isn’t going well.

Solo queue DESPERATELY needs a mechanic to report afk players (and apply dishonor similar to the system in GW1) or a vote-kick + fill from queue mechanic.

These are just two ways to solve the afk-er problem (which is a much bigger issue than people physically leaving the match). Right now it takes 2 mins of the player not even touching their keyboard to activate the 1-min countdown before kick. If the player is typing or even moves one step the afk timer is reset. I’ve never in over 200 solo queue matches seen someone be kicked for afk (though there have been plenty of matches that actually had people standing at the spawn doing nothing)

most popular to least
1. peasants noy showing up
2. afking dead or on spawn

add simple resign command after 250 points or at half time of the match

I know this problem too, ppl just never show up.
The reason for that could simply be ppl, which want to lower their rating in the ladder.

If ppl join the match afk, i agree with Hooma.9642, the queue times are often 8 min and longer (talking about top 200 matchups).
If a team has obiously no chance against the oponent team, players also often just stop playing, because beeing killed/farmed all the time is no fun. -> resign function might help, but plz be very very carefull with such a mechanic, don’t want to see red resign day again -.- On the other hand, players who stop playing if their team has obviously no chance are NOT a big problem!

EDIT: Nice to see an official paying attention to this problem

Yeah, something needs to happen asap.

Roughly 15% of my games are 4 vs.54 and it’s just not fun. Games with less than 10 active participants should not count and people need more severe punishment.

I understand people leaving the game if things go wrong in real life, but 90% are simply rage-quits or because they afk’d too long while queuing.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a full team vs another full team that went the entire match without a team suffering being short-handed. Auto-balance tends to occur in the majority of matches and I find little reason to volunteer. Sure, there’s a good honor bonus, but it’s not worth being put on a team where players will likely just ditch and join another game until they end up in a balanced or winning game.

Sorry to say, but the auto-balance system doesn’t work. If you increase the rewards for volunteering any more, people will just ditch games until they get a chance to volunteer instead of skipping to avoid it.

I think the problem stems from a system where players have no wait times and are put into a game which is almost never filled up before a game starts anyways. My advice? Take a page from WoW’s book:
– Don’t start any games until both teams are full.
– It’s ok for there to be a queue. Unbalanced games aren’t fun and there’s little consequence to leaving if you’ll just be instantly put in a new game anyways.
– Allow players to queue together. You can set up the queue system to pair grouped players against other grouped players to keep things relatively balanced.

The last point is a big one. Being auto-balanced against your best friend or loved one really sucks and this results in even more people leaving games early. As someone who is married to a fellow GW2 player, I can definitely speak to this (and have been for quite some time, lol). Because of the queue system, we don’t pvp together nearly as much as we would otherwise.

We appreciate the improvements to allow players to choose a team at the start, swap mid game, and the option to join in PvP, but the auto-balance system still kills this. If an auto-balance hits, it’s our cue to ditch and find another game…or quit PvPing if that becomes too much of a hassle.

Now, the tPvP side of things is in much, much better shape, but we don’t always want to jump in tournament stuff (would prefer to do with a full group, testing new builds, etc.). If you don’t take the full approach suggested above, at least considering structuring hot joins to be more like tPvP games.

Dahkeus.8243:

I can’t remember the last time I saw a full team vs another full team that went the entire match without a team suffering being short-handed. Auto-balance tends to occur in the majority of matches and I find little reason to volunteer. Sure, there’s a good honor bonus, but it’s not worth being put on a team where players will likely just ditch and join another game until they end up in a balanced or winning game.

Sorry to say, but the auto-balance system doesn’t work. If you increase the rewards for volunteering any more, people will just ditch games until they get a chance to volunteer instead of skipping to avoid it.

I think the problem stems from a system where players have no wait times and are put into a game which is almost never filled up before a game starts anyways. My advice? Take a page from WoW’s book:
– Don’t start any games until both teams are full.
– It’s ok for there to be a queue. Unbalanced games aren’t fun and there’s little consequence to leaving if you’ll just be instantly put in a new game anyways.
– Allow players to queue together. You can set up the queue system to pair grouped players against other grouped players to keep things relatively balanced.

The last point is a big one. Being auto-balanced against your best friend or loved one really sucks and this results in even more people leaving games early. As someone who is married to a fellow GW2 player, I can definitely speak to this (and have been for quite some time, lol). Because of the queue system, we don’t pvp together nearly as much as we would otherwise.

We appreciate the improvements to allow players to choose a team at the start, swap mid game, and the option to join in PvP, but the auto-balance system still kills this. If an auto-balance hits, it’s our cue to ditch and find another game…or quit PvPing if that becomes too much of a hassle.

Now, the tPvP side of things is in much, much better shape, but we don’t always want to jump in tournament stuff (would prefer to do with a full group, testing new builds, etc.). If you don’t take the full approach suggested above, at least considering structuring hot joins to be more like tPvP games.

we dont talk about hot join. whats the point to have hot join if hot join is like tpvp? if u want tpvp go play tpvp or spvp.

hooma.9642:

Dahkeus.8243:

I can’t remember the last time I saw a full team vs another full team that went the entire match without a team suffering being short-handed. Auto-balance tends to occur in the majority of matches and I find little reason to volunteer. Sure, there’s a good honor bonus, but it’s not worth being put on a team where players will likely just ditch and join another game until they end up in a balanced or winning game.

Sorry to say, but the auto-balance system doesn’t work. If you increase the rewards for volunteering any more, people will just ditch games until they get a chance to volunteer instead of skipping to avoid it.

I think the problem stems from a system where players have no wait times and are put into a game which is almost never filled up before a game starts anyways. My advice? Take a page from WoW’s book:
– Don’t start any games until both teams are full.
– It’s ok for there to be a queue. Unbalanced games aren’t fun and there’s little consequence to leaving if you’ll just be instantly put in a new game anyways.
– Allow players to queue together. You can set up the queue system to pair grouped players against other grouped players to keep things relatively balanced.

The last point is a big one. Being auto-balanced against your best friend or loved one really sucks and this results in even more people leaving games early. As someone who is married to a fellow GW2 player, I can definitely speak to this (and have been for quite some time, lol). Because of the queue system, we don’t pvp together nearly as much as we would otherwise.

We appreciate the improvements to allow players to choose a team at the start, swap mid game, and the option to join in PvP, but the auto-balance system still kills this. If an auto-balance hits, it’s our cue to ditch and find another game…or quit PvPing if that becomes too much of a hassle.

Now, the tPvP side of things is in much, much better shape, but we don’t always want to jump in tournament stuff (would prefer to do with a full group, testing new builds, etc.). If you don’t take the full approach suggested above, at least considering structuring hot joins to be more like tPvP games.

we dont talk about hot join. whats the point to have hot join if hot join is like tpvp? if u want tpvp go play tpvp or spvp.

Yea, I know it’s not cool to talk about hot join since all the 1337 players do nothing but tournaments, but it’s still part of the game. I don’t see why we can’t have a hot join system that puts together games with two full teams against each other where players who leave have some sort of repercussion for ditching a losing fight. There are enough other differences between hot join and tPvP.

Dahkeus.8243:

hooma.9642:

Dahkeus.8243:

I can’t remember the last time I saw a full team vs another full team that went the entire match without a team suffering being short-handed. Auto-balance tends to occur in the majority of matches and I find little reason to volunteer. Sure, there’s a good honor bonus, but it’s not worth being put on a team where players will likely just ditch and join another game until they end up in a balanced or winning game.

Sorry to say, but the auto-balance system doesn’t work. If you increase the rewards for volunteering any more, people will just ditch games until they get a chance to volunteer instead of skipping to avoid it.

I think the problem stems from a system where players have no wait times and are put into a game which is almost never filled up before a game starts anyways. My advice? Take a page from WoW’s book:
– Don’t start any games until both teams are full.
– It’s ok for there to be a queue. Unbalanced games aren’t fun and there’s little consequence to leaving if you’ll just be instantly put in a new game anyways.
– Allow players to queue together. You can set up the queue system to pair grouped players against other grouped players to keep things relatively balanced.

The last point is a big one. Being auto-balanced against your best friend or loved one really sucks and this results in even more people leaving games early. As someone who is married to a fellow GW2 player, I can definitely speak to this (and have been for quite some time, lol). Because of the queue system, we don’t pvp together nearly as much as we would otherwise.

We appreciate the improvements to allow players to choose a team at the start, swap mid game, and the option to join in PvP, but the auto-balance system still kills this. If an auto-balance hits, it’s our cue to ditch and find another game…or quit PvPing if that becomes too much of a hassle.

Now, the tPvP side of things is in much, much better shape, but we don’t always want to jump in tournament stuff (would prefer to do with a full group, testing new builds, etc.). If you don’t take the full approach suggested above, at least considering structuring hot joins to be more like tPvP games.

we dont talk about hot join. whats the point to have hot join if hot join is like tpvp? if u want tpvp go play tpvp or spvp.

Yea, I know it’s not cool to talk about hot join since all the 1337 players do nothing but tournaments, but it’s still part of the game. I don’t see why we can’t have a hot join system that puts together games with two full teams against each other where players who leave have some sort of repercussion for ditching a losing fight. There are enough other differences between hot join and tPvP.

cause its against the naturell of “HOT JOIN”.. do u understand what that HOT means in HOT JOIN?

style.6173:

It is really 3 areas:

1. People never showing up to the match
2. People disconnecting during the match
3. People standing at the spawn point the whole match

Most common is #1. Least common is #3.

Exactly the same for me.

It was much worse during the recent free trial. I assume that’s because newbies didn’t understand how the queue system worked. On several occasions I met people who were in a team arena match and it was their first time ever in pvp, and they spent the entire match trying to quit by force-closing the game only to be dragged in again when they logged back in!

I was over the moon when you allowed people to queue up for pvp from anywhere, but it’s proving a disaster for new players! PLEASE disable all the other tabs in the pvp window until new accounts have been forced to travel to the mists and complete the tutorials! And PLEASE put some explanatory text in the tpvp tab to explain how the queue system works, that unlike hotjoin you don’t get replaced if you leave a match, and that there’s a penalty for leaving. And, ideally, I’d like new accounts to be locked out of tournaments unmtil they’ve played a few games of hotjoin. Even rank 5 would be better than throwing them straight into the deep end!

hooma.9642:

Dahkeus.8243:

hooma.9642:

Dahkeus.8243:

I can’t remember the last time I saw a full team vs another full team that went the entire match without a team suffering being short-handed. Auto-balance tends to occur in the majority of matches and I find little reason to volunteer. Sure, there’s a good honor bonus, but it’s not worth being put on a team where players will likely just ditch and join another game until they end up in a balanced or winning game.

Sorry to say, but the auto-balance system doesn’t work. If you increase the rewards for volunteering any more, people will just ditch games until they get a chance to volunteer instead of skipping to avoid it.

I think the problem stems from a system where players have no wait times and are put into a game which is almost never filled up before a game starts anyways. My advice? Take a page from WoW’s book:
– Don’t start any games until both teams are full.
– It’s ok for there to be a queue. Unbalanced games aren’t fun and there’s little consequence to leaving if you’ll just be instantly put in a new game anyways.
– Allow players to queue together. You can set up the queue system to pair grouped players against other grouped players to keep things relatively balanced.

The last point is a big one. Being auto-balanced against your best friend or loved one really sucks and this results in even more people leaving games early. As someone who is married to a fellow GW2 player, I can definitely speak to this (and have been for quite some time, lol). Because of the queue system, we don’t pvp together nearly as much as we would otherwise.

We appreciate the improvements to allow players to choose a team at the start, swap mid game, and the option to join in PvP, but the auto-balance system still kills this. If an auto-balance hits, it’s our cue to ditch and find another game…or quit PvPing if that becomes too much of a hassle.

Now, the tPvP side of things is in much, much better shape, but we don’t always want to jump in tournament stuff (would prefer to do with a full group, testing new builds, etc.). If you don’t take the full approach suggested above, at least considering structuring hot joins to be more like tPvP games.

we dont talk about hot join. whats the point to have hot join if hot join is like tpvp? if u want tpvp go play tpvp or spvp.

Yea, I know it’s not cool to talk about hot join since all the 1337 players do nothing but tournaments, but it’s still part of the game. I don’t see why we can’t have a hot join system that puts together games with two full teams against each other where players who leave have some sort of repercussion for ditching a losing fight. There are enough other differences between hot join and tPvP.

cause its against the naturell of “HOT JOIN”.. do u understand what that HOT means in HOT JOIN?

It means unranked/casual. It doesn’t mean you have to throw all semblance of a team vs team match out the door.

I wish we had a choice to choose a map. like before the game actually started it would bring up two different maps to choose from. If you don’t vote within a certain amount of time it recognizes you as afk. (the map vote thing is basically so we don’t have to play on skyhammer…)

Allie Murdock.8152:

Sorry, going to change your topic/thread a bit to remove the swearing because I don’t want it to be snagged by moderators.

I would like to know if you’re experiencing leavers (joining and then leaving), or if it is just that people don’t show up to the match at all.

Thanks!

The problem starts with matchmaking……

People leave/afk cause they smell an unfair game.
And with matchmaking beeing 5 people vs 5 weaker people ,you cant blame them for leaving.

if you really want to work on the problem of leavers/ afk’ers , make sure both sides start of fair.
Meaning stop putting 5 people against 5 weaker people , but mix them up so both sides have experienced and less experienced players.
( pool of 10 people , then make 2 balanced teams out of that, make them balance on professions and ratings )

Dahkeus.8243:

It means unranked/casual. It doesn’t mean you have to throw all semblance of a team vs team match out the door.

No it doesn’t, it means drop-in/drop-out. The term “hotjoin” LITERALLY means that you can join at any time. If one side is disadvantaged the game autobalances. I think it’s an awesome way to play casually because there’s no waiting time between matches and if something comes up irl you can leave at any time without screwing over your team. And I think it’s a great way for beginners to learn. I play tournaments 90% of the time, but I love hotjoin the way it is and would be disappointed if they changed it.

Dahkeus.8243:

It means unranked/casual. It doesn’t mean you have to throw all semblance of a team vs team match out the door.

you are playing the wrong game mode. you are thinking of tpvp

First, a big thank-you to the OP – I’ve made a good half-dozen posts on this topic, as have many others, and this is the first dev response I’ve seen…so bravo.

Second, another thank-you to you Allie for this small but necessary and important step in addressing this real and painful issue. I also want to thank-you because now I can finally buy some more bank space…after the endless silence and lack of response or action on the 4v5 problem I swore I would not buy any more gems nor play non-tPvP sPvP until something was done…this is a start, hopefully in good faith, so the former at least I can now do.

As for the problem, it seems to me there are 4 types of uneven strength matches:

1) Matches which are uneven strength from match entry to match start
2) Matches which start at even strength but where players leave
3) Matches which start at even strength but some players are AFK
4) Matches which start at even strength, where players leave and return

I think it is important to recognize the different types, and also recognize which can be coded against and which can’t. I also think it is VERY important for ANet to not fail to do something on the issue in general, simply because some of specific causes have no (easy) solutions. Half a loaf is definitely better than none in this case.

So, by type:

1) Matches which are uneven strength from match entry to match start
This, in my view, is where ANet has the easiest job, and the best change of helping their customers with a few very simple modifications. In my opinion, no match should ever start if the teams are not at even strength…this seems obvious, as why would you want to deliver with absolute certainty an unpleasant and frustrating experience to your customers…but clearly this is not the case.

To address this specific type/issue, I recommend:

-Adding an audible alert to the ‘Match Entry’ window, that tells people the queue is up and where upon clicking the appropriate option you will enter the match. Considering queue times, there is no doubt many of the matches which start at uneven strength are due to the player simply being away from their keyboard, tabbed out to another window and so on. There are audible alerts for countless other in game events and dialogues which are of far less importance, it seems absurd that there is none here. Adding am audible alert could be done immediately and would without question eliminate at least SOME of the uneven strength match starts.

-Move the ‘Ready Check’ to prior to match entry, OR add a 2nd ready check
This again seems obvious…having a ready check before match entry would eliminate a portion of these matches.

-Add logic for match start that verifies player status
It is not clear exactly why matches start at uneven strength, and not clear from the questions Allie has asked if ANet even knows why. That is to say, when we as players sees only 4 names in the team list, it is possible that the game sees a team has all 5 players…but one may be in a different state in the process of connecting to the match/map and so on.

That said, it IS clear that the game is able to detect the states and status of players, for things such as when to display their name in the team list, AFK detection (which is very sensitive for some game areas, triggering even after a short duration of no player input) the physical location of players and so on. The game could detect and decide that a match is not even strength, regardless of the fuzzy status of the missing player, and do various things accordingly…extend the countdown timer, kick the player, refill the slot, kick a 5th player from the other team and start the match as 4v4 and so on…

I think most people would choose to be kicked back to the lobby and have to queue again, than have the unsatisfying and unpleasant experience of an uneven strength match. It is not fun for the losers to be sure. and even the winning team has had their game experience affected…potentially 9 people have had 10-15 minutes of their time wasted for the sake of 1 person, and in a painful fashion. Better to be kicked to lobby.

(continued)

2) Matches which start at even strength but where players leave
For this one, there are 2 different scenarios – one in which a player leaves the match, before it has started, during planning time, and the other where they leave after match start. In the former case, this is sometimes due to their wanting to change classes, having seen the make-up of the two teams – this is a desirable thing. and should not be coded against. For both cases, it can be a disconnection issue.

This complicates any code-based approach to this problem. There are things which could be done, such as a button like the Ready Check which can be clicked to indicate you are changing classes, which could even retain your team slot indicator with an icon indicating same. It could perhaps add or freeze the game countdown timer…this is something that would need a soft but dynamic solution

The other scenario, where they leave after match start, is a very common one and is often as a reaction to the early happenings in game, team performance and so on. There are three elements to this case of people leaving a match:

-What should happen to the ‘leaver’
-What should happen to the remaining players
-What should happen to the game

There are a range of options here, which could be used alone or in combination. For example, the current system which is designed to punish the person leaving the match…this could be modified or replace to make doing so more painful to that player. Instead of (just) denying access to sPvP, or say tPvP, there could be a penalty in the form of Rank loss, Glory loss or even restriction from some of the PvP game types—-Solo or Team queue for example, keeping Hotjoin accessible.

For the non-leavers, you have those on the under-manned team and those on the opposing team. Here we have options like the match not counting as a win or loss for the undermanned team, the match not counting as a win for the full-strength team, or some other mechanism to normalize the consequences according to the circumstances.

For the game match itself, again it could become unrated, not impacting the rankings in any way, it could seek to fill the empty spot or perhaps even some form of auto-balancing if appropriate – players moved to spectate or the other team, so as to equalize numbers.

3) Matches which start at even strength but some players are AFK
AFK detection as mentioned already exists as part of the game mechanics. A game could thus be flagged as uneven strength even if there are 5 players in the match and this be treated according to the above-mentioned suggestions. This would include penalties, however they should be less strict in triggering and nature as going AFK is sometimes necessary…the frequency and length of these periods should determine the consequences.

4) Matches which start at even strength, where players leave and return
There are three reasons for this as far as I can see – people changing classes, people losing connection and people trying to AFK and avoid the penalties. The need here would be to determine which of the 3 the AFK was, and this would depend on what the game can detect in terms of the circumstances…a disconnection for example should appear different from a logout and so on. If some code could be devised which could intelligently determine what the situation is, it could then apply the various actions as were warranted.

I think it is very important to recognize both how negatively impacting uneven strength is to a match, and how commonly it occurs…and that even the smallest things that can be done right away, should be done, even if other more difficult things are to be done down the line…the audible alert, the pre-match entry ready check…these things can and should be done right away, as they will help to a degree on their own.

Thanks for the effort in collecting information on this issue and thank-you for taking the time to read this. I hope we see some action on this in the very near future – it is rare that one has the opportunity to be 100% sure of making people happier, and ANet definitely has that opportunity here.