Guild Wars 2

So in another discussion about how to prevent 4v5 arena matches and such, I thought of something that seems absolutely perfect.

My solution is a “bench.” Goes like this. Red Team only has 4 players. Blue Team has 5. As a result, a random player from Blue Team gets benched. That player is stuck on the bench till one of his teammates is defeated, after which he gets to spawn into the match and the defeated player now sits on the bench waiting for his turn to get back in the match.

This way, the match is still balanced. This solution would work with any sort of unbalanced fights. Everyone still gets to participate in the match, and therefore still gets the rewards that their team earns.

So, would like to hear your thoughts and maybe get Anet to consider this as a long term goal, as I’m guessing it might tike some time to implement.

Sure. But how can you justify to the person who hit the Q button that they can not play. The benched person is not at fault for someone on the other team not joining the game. Another issue is how is the game going to detect someone who is AFK at spawn. What if no one on my team dies? So many things can make this solution not work but it is honestly better than what we have.

It not always that fault of the the team that one of their members didn’t show up, such as in solo queue. And no matter how you look at it, a 4v5 match is not a fair match. It’s frustrating for the disadvantaged team and an easy win for the advantaged team.

Detecting someone who is afk is an issue that exists with or without my proposed changes. The difference is, with my changes, if they improved on kicking and punishing an afk person, it wouldn’t hurt the team that just lost a player as bad due to the benching system then kicking in.

And if no one on your team dies, then that is incredible! The plus side is your team probably won and you got rewards for doing nothing, with the only downside being you had to sit on the sidelines.

My point is, putting my proposed bench system into place creates a better match for both teams as a whole.

I really don’t think there are any downsides to using such a system.

I would fully support a system like this for hotjoin. The playerbase has really grown a lot, so I think it would be reasonable to keep one player on the “bench” for a few seconds until either another player joined the other team, or a teammate died.

In solo or team queue, it could become frustrating. Let’s say you’re in a solo queue and your team is awful. Like really awful. It’s okay though—you’re wrecking it over at far point, taking on two enemy players alone. Even though you’re playing perfectly, it’s still a close match because your team is just that bad. At 450-450, you manage to down and kill one of the enemies in a 1v2 before dying…

…and then you’re forced to sit on the bench and watch your team lose. Not cool.

This idea has come up in a couple of threads, so maybe you’ve heard this before:

The basic idea of balancing team numbers is good. But taking someone out of the game indefinitely is not optimal. It’s frustrating for the person who is out. And it could potentially be gamed; for certain team comps, you might have an incentive to avoid stomping opponents in order to keep a different player “on the bench”.

I think you could get the best of both worlds simply by changing respawn times. For example, if you are on the 4-person team, then your respawn time is reduced to zero seconds. If you are on the 5-person team, then your respawn time is increased to 40-60 seconds. This means that the 4-person team always has 4 people in the game, and the 5-person team on average has 4 people in the game. But if you are on the 5-person team and die, there is no uncertainty on anyone’s part regarding when you will return to the game.

Mwah, for solo or team it doesn’t happen much. Hotjoin is just for fooling around anyway. I don’t feel like wasting time on a bench.