Guild Wars 2

as the title says, exploiting the currently flawed spectator mode and team select combo in spvp should be seen as an exploit, because that is exactly what it is.

you ban exploiters. correct? so ban these scrubs that are ruining ever single match!

they are breaking your code of conduct
“While participating in Plaver-vs-Player (PvP) gameplay, you will not participate in any form of match manipulation.”
joining the winning team and causing the losing team to permanently be outnumbered (resulting in the landslide victories every time.) is match manipulation.

it is literally every single match…ruined because of exploiters.

You can hardly call a 4v3 a match though…

I can’t agree more! I used to love spvp so much but since spectator mode became a thing, the problem of match manipulation has been just rampant and negatively affecting my experience a lot. I can’t actually believe it’s gone on this long without being fixed. Can’t tell why Anet haven’t fixed this yet; they turned a blind eye? Don’t play hotjoin much? or just too much effort to fix? I don’t know. I just know it’s now finally been addressed in the other spectator mode thread…but I have my doubts it will be fixed anytime soon. Nevertheless, I feel this ‘exploit’ has been ruining the experience for many, especially new players. I feel rank is no clear indicator of skill given skyhammer farming, but it does show experience! That, or I feel people mistake rank for skill and all hop onto spectator mode at the start to see which side has the higher ranked ppl and then join them. This generally creates landslide victories, and when I stumble onto such unbalanced matches, I myself just root for the underdog team hoping they pull a win.

A super easy fix to this. I don’t understand why ANET hasn’t implemented it. Here is what they need to do:

If the match has an even number of players (let’s say 3v3), the next player to join must join the losing team.

There. Implement it.

Clip.6845:

You can hardly call a 4v3 a match though…

Pretty much this. By the way OP, Spectate Mode abuse is impossible when a match is 5v5.

Nobody gives a crap when a game is “exploited” with one side stacked so hard with a numbers advantage because the match was never legitimate to begin with. The exploitation began long before spectator mode happened.

Reactively limiting manipulating is always a losing battle because they will always be a step ahead of you. Limit this, and the next check-and-balance is simply joining the stacked side to AFK or do something detrimental (AFK with the orb, suicide in skyhammer). How long before we start banning the people stacking these matches to oblivion to begin with as well?

Stop your kneejerk outrage and come up with ways to discourage stacking, while encouraging matches to (fully) fill up with relative balance on both sides.

shuffle the teams based on player experience. please.

DaveGan.8065:

By the way OP, Spectate Mode abuse is impossible when a match is 5v5.

the match is never 5v5 until a good 80-90% of the way through it, once the spectator exploiters have solidified their cheap win.

Liewec.2896:

DaveGan.8065:

By the way OP, Spectate Mode abuse is impossible when a match is 5v5.

the match is never 5v5 until a good 80-90% of the way through it, once the spectator exploiters have solidified their cheap win.

This is the real problem, not this spectate/autobalance stuff. The matches were never legitimate in the first place because everyone is stacking 5v4 farming mostly rank 5-15 players. If matches filled up in a balanced fashion to 5v5 spectate would not even be an issue.

Nobody feels sympathy when someone in that 5 gets autobalanced over, because that someone likely contributed to the massive imbalance.

Nobody feels guilt for manipulating themselves onto the winning side because of the constant massive skill and numbers imbalance throughout the match.

Many times the only way to even achieve a 5v5 from 4v5 is to spectate, balance someone over, and rejoin your team. The 5th spot on the other (winning) side will quickly be filled by someone looking for a victory.

Stop thinking about how to force people to remain stuck in and play your crappy 5v4 500-125 matches. How do you encourage strong players to play against each other? How do you not make the rank 5 player look like he has the Ebola virus? How can you encourage matches to fill quickly? How will you encourage players to fill that last slot?

I hope people get banned for this. The spectator exploit happened to me all afternoon while I was testing builds. It was literally the worse experience ive had in hotjoin for a very long time. One match I believe I had 9 autobalances and my friends starting calling it human pinball lol.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I hope people get banned for this. The spectator exploit happened to me all afternoon while I was testing builds. It was literally the worse experience ive had in hotjoin for a very long time. One match I believe I had 9 autobalances and my friends starting calling it human pinball lol.

With all the autobalances, how many times was it:

1) someone joining the other side?
2) someone joining the same side (trying to fill in the otherwise-unfillable slot in 4v5)?
3) someone fed up with the imbalance and leaving the server entirely?

Also

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I had 9 autobalances and my friends starting calling it human pinball lol.

I’m going to go way out on a limb and say you and your friends were probably stacking one side and imbalancing the server. Why would anyone want to stay versus that unless they had friends as well? Why should anyone stay?

Seems like autobalance was doing its job and balancing the match. Seems a bit hypocritical if it really is the case and you’re still asking for bans.

DaveGan.8065:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I hope people get banned for this. The spectator exploit happened to me all afternoon while I was testing builds. It was literally the worse experience ive had in hotjoin for a very long time. One match I believe I had 9 autobalances and my friends starting calling it human pinball lol.

With all the autobalances, how many times was it:

1) someone joining the other side?
2) someone joining the same side (trying to fill in the otherwise-unfillable slot in 4v5)?
3) someone fed up with the imbalance and leaving the server entirely?

Also

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

I had 9 autobalances and my friends starting calling it human pinball lol.

I’m going to go way out on a limb and say you and your friends were probably stacking one side and imbalancing the server. Why would anyone want to stay versus that unless they had friends as well? Why should anyone stay?

Seems like autobalance was doing its job and balancing the match. Seems a bit hypocritical if it really is the case and you’re still asking for bans.

Um considering myself and friends just wanted to pvp for fun and not get switched every 10 seconds that match, we eventually got fed up, reported him, and left for a new server.

Also, stop twisting my words. If I just said in my paragraph that I hated the experience, why would my friends purposely imbalance the match and annoy me? They hated getting swapped every 10 seconds just as much as i did.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

~snip~

My comment about hypocrisy stands.

I (correctly?) assumed your friends were stacking on the same team with you, not against. If so you guys have a large share of responsibility for the imbalance it created in your matches, regardless of your motives (“having fun”, “farming scrubs”, etc).

The other part of my post was a bit of a skeptical question asking how many of the autobalances were actually one guy switching to the other team. Most autobalances in matches like yours are just people leaving because there is way too much imbalance and not enough incentives make/turn matches competitive.

I don’t want hotjoins to lose the ability for people to play with their friends, but the current system only punishes people if they try to play against a group of friends or higher ranks who want to band together. Why participate in a high risk/low reward game? Or stay in the match when it becomes clear that’s what it is?

It seems a little silly to care so much about hotjoin matches. If you win you get like 200-300 more RP, while reward tracks for hotjoin have a massively short cap anyways, and the gold diffrence is like 5s.

If you are 80 what use is RP anyway? A rank chest? You mean the thing you got 80+ times and noting good from?

Sure you get some good close games every now and then but usually half the ppl in the game don’t care and are playing TDM or don’t know what they are doing. While the other half are try harding and carrying.

It seems kind of pointless to think of hotjoins as anything outside that of a random TF2 server or chivalry duel server in some cases, where you mostly just shoot the crap and have fun.

If the rank points were the same win or lose but reward tracks filled faster for wins with a higher cap less ppl would attempt to switch, and those that do I still wouldn’t care enough to harbor anything against them

It is a bit silly tho when you watch a player do it like 3 times only to get auto balanced to the losing team than spectate again… I mean you got your guaranteed win just chill bro lol but I don’t think that warrants a ban.

DaveGan.8065:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

~snip~

My comment about hypocrisy stands.

I (correctly?) assumed your friends were stacking on the same team with you, not against. If so you guys have a large share of responsibility for the imbalance it created in your matches, regardless of your motives (“having fun”, “farming scrubs”, etc).

The other part of my post was a bit of a skeptical question asking how many of the autobalances were actually one guy switching to the other team. Most autobalances in matches like yours are just people leaving because there is way too much imbalance and not enough incentives make/turn matches competitive.

I don’t want hotjoins to lose the ability for people to play with their friends, but the current system only punishes people if they try to play against a group of friends or higher ranks who want to band together. Why participate in a high risk/low reward game? Or stay in the match when it becomes clear that’s what it is?

Your point is fair, however my friends just joined the match like anyone else because we really didn’t care. If anything we just wanted to have fun playing against each other. The match was a 3v3 and then this group of 3 comes in and keeps twisting the match to force autobalance to make sure each of them wins. After we all complained about exploiting the match, they admitting they were exploiting and continued to force the match just to annoy us. Eventually, we got fed up about 3/4ths of the match and reported them for verbal abuse (why no report for exploiting) and left for a new server. We didn’t stay in the match when it was clear on what it was, no one did lol. There was nothing we could do to stop the autobalance, so we just reported and left.

So this is why i get 5vs4 3vs2 and 2vs1 all the time ? i just started spvp so i am a noob at it but if this is how they want to play i will do nothing but solo/Q now and forever

played 13 matches in spvp total so far not one was 5v5 even with max spectators

Deal.

Is it good? No. Is it fair? No. Is it cheesy? Yes. You know this when you queue.

Deal.

you want win so much go team spvp matchmaking… hot join is the place to test build

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Your point is fair, however my friends just joined the match like anyone else because we really didn’t care. If anything we just wanted to have fun playing against each other. The match was a 3v3 and then this group of 3 comes in and keeps twisting the match to force autobalance to make sure each of them wins. After we all complained about exploiting the match, they admitting they were exploiting and continued to force the match just to annoy us. Eventually, we got fed up about 3/4ths of the match and reported them for verbal abuse (why no report for exploiting) and left for a new server. We didn’t stay in the match when it was clear on what it was, no one did lol. There was nothing we could do to stop the autobalance, so we just reported and left.

Sounds like a bunch of trolls.

If they were farming with 3 of them they could have found any empty server and autobalance farmed with zero opposition considerably faster than what they were getting in your game.

DaveGan.8065:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Your point is fair, however my friends just joined the match like anyone else because we really didn’t care. If anything we just wanted to have fun playing against each other. The match was a 3v3 and then this group of 3 comes in and keeps twisting the match to force autobalance to make sure each of them wins. After we all complained about exploiting the match, they admitting they were exploiting and continued to force the match just to annoy us. Eventually, we got fed up about 3/4ths of the match and reported them for verbal abuse (why no report for exploiting) and left for a new server. We didn’t stay in the match when it was clear on what it was, no one did lol. There was nothing we could do to stop the autobalance, so we just reported and left.

Sounds like a bunch of trolls.

If they were farming with 3 of them they could have found any empty server and autobalance farmed with zero opposition considerably faster than what they were getting in your game.

Its still match manipulation so they should be at least temp banned for it.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Its still match manipulation so they should be at least temp banned for it.

It’s the blatant trolling that stands out to me more.

But playing devil’s advocate, are people stacking teams one-sidedly guilty of the same match manipulation (arguably moreso since they are often the cause of the imbalance problem)? The ones that sit in spectator mode until the team with their friends/high ranks becomes available, or the ones sitting in spectator mode until some sucker joins the other side in 3v2/4v3?

How far are you willing you go to enforce match manipulation? If you’re going to do it for one case, perhaps it needs to be enforced for all.

ANet designed hotjoin to be a casual balanced PvP environment (evident by the use of autobalance, etc), so there is a social contract here. The current imbalance is a pretty noticeable violation of this social contract so players in turn have little obligation to uphold their end.

DaveGan.8065:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Its still match manipulation so they should be at least temp banned for it.

It’s the blatant trolling that stands out to me more.

But playing devil’s advocate, are people stacking teams one-sidedly guilty of the same match manipulation (arguably moreso since they are often the cause of the imbalance problem)? The ones that sit in spectator mode until the team with their friends/high ranks becomes available, or the ones sitting in spectator mode until some sucker joins the other side in 3v2/4v3?

How far are you willing you go to enforce match manipulation? If you’re going to do it for one case, perhaps it needs to be enforced for all.

ANet designed hotjoin to be a casual balanced PvP environment (evident by the use of autobalance, etc), so there is a social contract here. The current imbalance is a pretty noticeable violation of this social contract so players in turn have little obligation to uphold their end.

I guess then theres no real solution. Anet isn’t going to change it since hotjoin is casual and so people can really do anything they want including abuse the system. Oh well. How low people have fallen in pvp over the past 2 years is truly incredible.

Who the kitten cares about hotjoin. You all sound like those parents that make decision complaints to the referee of a 5yo’s football game

Nemiros.3590:

Who the kitten cares about hotjoin. You all sound like those parents that make decision complaints to the referee of a 5yo’s football game

I care about hotjoin. Im not a gret pvper and I play hotjoin for fun and to get better at playing. I have no interest in competitive play because peoplebecome asswholes and I dont want to drag a team down. I dont care if I am on the winning side I play for fun. I do however want to have a mostly fair team.

If you like competitive pvp then you should also care about hotjoin… its new players first experience and if every game is a steamroll not many are going to stay in the heart of the mists

No one is going to be banned for mild trolling in a casual screw around part of the game.

If you want proper matches structured to your desires but still unranked, buy your own server. Can’t afford it? Ask around, you can get access to locked servers pretty easily ppl are pretty lenient with that. If not join in empty rooms and hope not to get trolled by randoms.

Daishi.6027:

No one is going to be banned for mild trolling in a casual screw around part of the game.

If you want proper matches structured to your desires but still unranked, buy your own server. Can’t afford it? Ask around, you can get access to locked servers pretty easily ppl are pretty lenient with that. If not join in empty rooms and hope not to get trolled by randoms.

its not trolling, its exploiting, while i agree that i don’t realistically think anet will ban people for it, the question needs to be asked, why not? why not investigate it and throw out temp bans to discourage exploiters, or better yet, why not fix it?!

if people find a way to easily make gold they get perma banned fast (as we saw in the early stages of the game when lots of players were banned for exploiting a flaw in the system), this should be taken even more seriously since it abusing a flaw in the competitive side of the game (pvp) directly diminishing the experience of everyone in the match.

as to your suggestions, custom arenas just don’t fill up fast enough, or have ridiculous score limits like 1000, or other rules, the official server rules are perfect for me.

final words, casual doesn’t mean a stressful, pointless, exploitable landslide match,
casual should by just like rated matches except with less meta and a more of a relaxed attitude,
there is no excuse for people exploiting spvp under the blanket excuse of “well its just casual” yes its casual, so we’d all like to enjoy our casual time and not have 3v5s!

i really hope anet do something about team select and spectator by next patch,
or remove both entirely!

I have a problem with the context of “exploit” an exploit implies you are abusing a flaw in the system to get something you really shouldn’t have access to. Now to carrying dagrees if someone made 100g and stopped (like after the snowflake incident) nothing would happen, continuing to exploit upwards of 2k-g is a problem because it harms other aspects of the game.

If ppl find a way to make easy gold it breaks the economy. If Mesmers cheat port into keeps it ruins WvW.

If ppl auto balance for a win that’s 1/40 matches before a rank up with rewards including the gold on a cap. No one is getting a real advantage beyond a hotjoin win. And frankly there are more pressing matters.

Granted there should be a method of installing proper 5v5 matches unranked but outside of team queue there is no guarantee of anything. It’s a population issue even solo queue suffers from 5v4s.

Although it might be cool for auto balance to pick from the pool of spectators first. Anyone afk will just get booted for inactivity and start the cycle again.

Stop playing hot join problem solved.

Liewec.2896:

its not trolling, its exploiting, while i agree that i don’t realistically think anet will ban people for it, the question needs to be asked, why not? why not investigate it and throw out temp bans to discourage exploiters, or better yet, why not fix it?!

Serious question: are people who rank stack (or sit in spectate trying to join one team) not exploiting just as hard and deserving of this same temp/perma ban you speak of?

I guarantee imbalance in hotjoin will become worse if all you look at is the spectate/autobalance issue. If ANet’s stance becomes that they condone stacking then more and more people will no longer have any issue exploiting that for maximum gain (before they themselves get exploited).

Current reward structure makes it so leaving a match early enough is a negligible sacrifice in rewards for the chance to imbalance another server for an easy win. The side effect is that simple skill/rank imbalances snowball into number imbalances (5v4/4v3) that never get filled.

The first step is for ANet to realize that in hotjoin, wins are not worth 250% the reward track progression of losses.

Rozbuska.5263:

Stop playing hot join problem solved.

That’s exactly the mentality that kill games. Hot join is designed for the casual pvp experience and it is also designed for beginners to learn what pvp is all about. If new players are turned off to pvp then less new players will trickle upwards to the more competitive styles of game. As existing high level players burn out and drop the game there will be fewer and fewer people replacing them.

What helped GW1 pvp last was the existence of Random arenas, and later Alliance battles which acted as a training grounds for the other areas of competitive game play (TA, HA, GVGs)

Even if you don’t play hot join, improving the experience of hot join can still positively effect you.

No.

The reason is simple, it will lead to report abuse. There will be no reliable way to find match manipulators. I can report that player I think is throwing the match, but maybe he isn’t.

ANet will ban innocent players or rarely enforce this at all.

who cares it’s hotjoin..

Rozbuska.5263:

Stop playing hot join problem solved.

Archaon.9524:

who cares it’s hotjoin..

thank you for your extremely useful input on how to improve the quality of the game…
A) stop playing it, tadaa!

Liewec.2896:

Rozbuska.5263:

Stop playing hot join problem solved.

Archaon.9524:

who cares it’s hotjoin..

thank you for your extremely useful input on how to improve the quality of the game…
A) stop playing it, tadaa!

Hotjoin should had been removed long ago anyway…so noone actually cares..

Archaon,
you do not speak for the rest of the community.
there are a lot of people who care for hotjoin, hence, these discussions happen.

Liewec,
banning people this way may be too harsh though.
they just need to remove the means for people to do this and shuffle the teams better.

I really don’t understand why anyone gives a kitten about wins in hotjoin, I always join the losing side just to see if I can actually make a difference. I guess not enough people have that attitude though.

NeXeD.3042:

I really don’t understand why anyone gives a kitten about wins in hotjoin, I always join the losing side just to see if I can actually make a difference. I guess not enough people have that attitude though.

8/10 games on hotjoin go like this:

1. Game starts, 4v3, you are on team with 3.
2. You play well, you have about 50 point advantage, new players join in and join your team, it’s now 4v5
3. Enemy team member notices, joins spectate to force autobalance
4. You volunteer
5. You are basically nullifying the things you did before switching and making the game longer for no real reason, you can now either try to win or just run around and enjoy some off point fights, doesn’t matter because you’ll get a win bonus.

Or if you are lucky enough to have good players, but they stack because they are friends:

1. Game starts, many remain in spectator mode to join the same team
2. Stacker team starts winning with 5v4 or 4v3 because they simply can contest&defend more points. You can not be on 3 points at the same.
3. Somebody starts to force autobalance
4. Other player notices, joins spectator too or quits, it’s now constantly 5v3 or 5v2 or 4v2 because of players wanting to join the winning team and friends trying to stay on the same side. Until finally the game reaches a score of 400 for the winning team
5. Autobalance no longer works and the teams are even, but the score gap is too large to close.

the other 2/10 games are games where good people actually don’t stack on the same team and enough people join to get a full 5v5 from the start.

Liewec.2896:

Rozbuska.5263:

Stop playing hot join problem solved.

Archaon.9524:

who cares it’s hotjoin..

thank you for your extremely useful input on how to improve the quality of the game…
A) stop playing it, tadaa!

He makes a perfectly valid point. You are complaining about something you can 100% avoid if you want to… AND you will get better rewards for avoiding it. There is a fix in the game for this already, its called Solo Queue. The more people that play it the faster it will matchmake and the more fair the matches will be due to the population increase. Why ANet has let hotjoin stay for this long is beyond me.

displacedTitan.6897:

Liewec.2896:

Rozbuska.5263:

Stop playing hot join problem solved.

Archaon.9524:

who cares it’s hotjoin..

thank you for your extremely useful input on how to improve the quality of the game…
A) stop playing it, tadaa!

He makes a perfectly valid point. You are complaining about something you can 100% avoid if you want to… AND you will get better rewards for avoiding it. There is a fix in the game for this already, its called Solo Queue. The more people that play it the faster it will matchmake and the more fair the matches will be due to the population increase. Why ANet has let hotjoin stay for this long is beyond me.

Hmm, So I should join a queue, play a bit with a new build, realize it doesn’t work against good players and quit halfway the match? Or join a queue when I have dinner in 15 min? Or leave the arena match when I get a phonecall or the front door rings or my pizza is being delivered?

Good solution!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Archaon,
you do not speak for the rest of the community.
there are a lot of people who care for hotjoin

and this is why gw2 pvp died long time ago…hotjoin had been completely pointless since first day, never made ppl getting better or learning how to pvp…most of pvp community atm comes from hotjoin and that’s why competitive pvp is getting worse every day..hotjoin should have never existed…

Archaon.9524:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Archaon,
you do not speak for the rest of the community.
there are a lot of people who care for hotjoin

and this is why gw2 pvp died long time ago…hotjoin had been completely pointless since first day, never made ppl getting better or learning how to pvp…most of pvp community atm comes from hotjoin and that’s why competitive pvp is getting worse every day..hotjoin should have never existed…

gw2 pvp died because of elitism people such as yourself, never was hotjoin.
casual players > minority such as yourself

NeXeD.3042:

I really don’t understand why anyone gives a kitten about wins in hotjoin.

its not so much the win i care about, just the experience,
i can have a well balanced 5v5 and lose and still have fun,
similarly being on the side that gets the spectator abusers isn’t fun because you steamroll and either end up standing around with noone to fight or spawn camping.

onesided matches always suck.
its not about the win or lose

this exploit needs to go by next patch!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Archaon.9524:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Archaon,
you do not speak for the rest of the community.
there are a lot of people who care for hotjoin

and this is why gw2 pvp died long time ago…hotjoin had been completely pointless since first day, never made ppl getting better or learning how to pvp…most of pvp community atm comes from hotjoin and that’s why competitive pvp is getting worse every day..hotjoin should have never existed…

gw2 pvp died because of elitism people such as yourself, never was hotjoin.
casual players > minority such as yourself

lol and dota2 are esports because of competitive players not because of low league random casuals, noone cares about casual players in competitive gaming…you know right? casuals make games bigger not better…

The 5v2 will get autobalanced, and if people insist on changing teams constantly in verbally abuse them and play the cheesiest trolliest build I can on whatever class I’m on.

Way I see it I don’t mind fighting outnumbered it is something everyone has to do at some point and practicing it is only going to help. If you’re one of those people who is going to get frustrated and angry when you aren’t having an ideal experience than I don’t have a solution for you that doesn’t involve chemicals.

i’ve never even encountered a capable player in hotjoin that would join the winning team just to win. then again, i never saw a capable player do hotjoin in the first place :P