Guild Wars 2

To come at this from a different perspective.

People here wants to implement pauses as a counter-measure of something that shouldn’t happen in the first place.

If a dc happens then the team of which a player dc will suffer; thus we implement pauses to remedy something like that happening.

Dc is (most of the time at least) client side issues; e.g. loss of connection, graphic driver failure, client error, etc. What should be worked on is to limit the amount or chance of dc. This should be much higher priority than finding a remedy for dc.

Now knowing that you are entering a tournament with monetary rewards or rewards of importance to you. I assume most of us would at least make sure we are least likely to dc. E.g. I have seen the example of people blaming windows update for suddenly wanting to restart their comp. <- That is player’s fault and I find that such ignorance doesn’t deserve other players waiting for you.

On the other hand you have people living far away from the servers or who have low bandwidth who’d still like to play and who dc due to their situation (which cannot be improved). It’s for these people that we hope to see optimisation of client/server to prevent dc.

When it comes to implementing pauses themselves; there is no way in my opinion you can justify implementing them without creating more problems than what you had at hand to begin with. With pauses you create problems such as “tac pause”, “dc trolling”, “pause exploitation”. Any of which can only be remedied by removing pauses.

So we are looking at a scale here where we have “dc” on one side, and “pause exploitation” on the other. Since this a choice of which is the greater evil I believe it is adamant that we as players are left with a choice. Do we want to play in a tournament where dc is punished or do we want to be subjected to possible pause exploitation.

Implementing pauses should therefore be optional; decided by the shoutcaster/admin of the tournament. It should also be explicitly stated whether pauses are enabled or not in a game so that the player can enter knowing what s/he chooses.

In the end what should really be done is optimisation, optimisation, optimisation, to reduce dc.

Justin ODell.9517:

How do we handle trolls that disconnect on purpose?

Do we count a disconnect as part of dishonor?

In my opinion, the best way to approach that problem is to give players a certain amount of time to reconnect, like 5 minutes, and if they do not reconnect in that time, then they receive dishonor. If a player disconnects multiple times during a match—perhaps more than 2 overall, or more than twice within 10 minutes—then they will also receive dishonor.

Please don’t make disconnects an automatic “dishonor offense.” That existed in the original Guild Wars, and it caused unimaginable frustration. The game punished you if your Internet connection decided it was going to take a vacation for a minute, or if your computer decided it was time to update without asking permission. Players should at least be given a chance before they are condemned as “dishonorable.”

Chobiko.9182:

Implementing pauses should therefore be optional; decided by the shoutcaster/admin of the tournament. It should also be explicitly stated whether pauses are enabled or not in a game so that the player can enter knowing what s/he chooses.

I think it should be voted by players and only be available on custom servers (as option for this server).
Keeping it away from standard servers and there is no problem with trolling.

If you dont want to play with pause … dont join custom servers / filter out all servers with the pause enabled.

Thats like the same with players filtering out the servers with skyhammer :P

If someone disconnects, a player from the opposite team should be moved to spectate till another player returns, 5 vs 5 becomes 4 vs 4. I don’t think anyone can complain at that.

youlostthegame.8102:

If someone disconnects, a player from the opposite team should be moved to spectate till another player returns, 5 vs 5 becomes 4 vs 4. I don’t think anyone can complain at that.

Well, it would perhaps result in parties with 4 strong players to always bring a weak 5th that drops in every match. (Instead of working on finding a strong 5th player)

This would of course get much more dramatic if the game ends up becoming a 3v3 or 1v1 for that matter. (Which would be completely silly) But I guess it would get capped at 4 v 4.

Bump, did your stance change after 6 months and the recent dc issues in ToL? Maybe we can get this on the list right after the season/high tier reward system.

Justin ODell.9517:

Guts.4967:

It’s quite easy in fact…

Actually, it’s not easy. If it were, I can guarantee you that I would have already implemented it myself. We LOVE easy changes that improve quality of life for our players. (Maximum payoff for minimum effort. :P)

This is definitely something we want to do, but it’s at a lower priority than what we are currently working on. I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s how we have to approach these sort of things.

After this tournament it’s quite obvious that you need to rework your priorities.

Justin ODell.9517:

Hmm, maybe this is a good opportunity to get your feedback on the issue.

Do we freeze everything or do we throw everyone back into their team spawns and keep the gates locked?

Do we add a time window for how long a game can remain paused?

Tournaments are often run on a schedule, do we keep the game clock running while the game is paused so the game will still end around the same time?

If the player comes back, do we just resume the action or do we restart the match?

What do we do when we have to give up on waiting for the player to reconnect?

How do we handle trolls that disconnect on purpose?

Do we count a disconnect as part of dishonor?

Do we disable progression and rewards for a game that doesn’t finish because of a disconnect?

Do custom arena owners want to be able to pause through a command?

Lets hear your ideas. Try to come at the problem from more than one angle.

Are you serious? You don’t know what to do to make the game fair??????????????
If you obviously reset the position of the players, you are potentially indirectly giving opportunity to a losing team. If you freeze the players in their positions/pause cooldowns/buffs until the disconnected person returns it is AS IF HE DIDN’T DISCONNECT. LOL…

To go with this, you might want to implement a countdown until you resume the game. 1 minute at least. And also, when you disconnect, you have to go through 2 LOADSCREENS. For the love of god, just go straight to the match it wastes precious time but it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if you freezed the game.

If people deliberately DC to ‘troll’ then have a few ways to solve it.
1. Make a function event to check if the game client has been closed by simply closing the game/ending the task, which leads for the server to take action and to not freeze the game for everyone else.

2. If it is disconnections, either cutting off the internet on purpose or not. You can’t tell. So you would need to limit the number of times someone disconnects until you resume the game. giving 2 chances seems fair.

3. Create a surrender option. It is grueling to wait for the game to end when your team knows you can’t win. Just end the game. Stop wasting time.

Admins of custom arenas should be able to access this. I mean why not? If they are doing unofficial tournaments for fun but still want to play fairly, then they should have the right to do so.

This should have been done a long time ago and you know the answers to this already. It wasn’t really an issue until you make it one. This is the most logical way to do things.

Justin ODell.9517:

Hmm, maybe this is a good opportunity to get your feedback on the issue.

I will try to answer your questions as good as I can, from my point of view.

Justin ODell.9517:

Do we freeze everything or do we throw everyone back into their team spawns and keep the gates locked?

Since in GW2 the score keeps on running because of the capture points, it would obviously need a complete freeze, stopping the point accumulation AND simply freezing all player characters, so they can take no advantage of the situation by decapping/capping strategical points.

Justin ODell.9517:

Do we add a time window for how long a game can remain paused?

I think a time window is appropriate, because:

1) You need to give the player time to ‘if needed’;
- restart his internet
- restart his game client
- get back into the match

2) Both teams should be able to catch up and prepare for the continuation of the match.

Justin ODell.9517:

Tournaments are often run on a schedule, do we keep the game clock running while the game is paused so the game will still end around the same time?

I do not know about this in particular. Best to have multiple tournament moderators on at the same time.

Justin ODell.9517:

If the player comes back, do we just resume the action or do we restart the match?

Resume the action only after the time window has closed (e.g. 5 minutes). Don’t resume it the moment the player comes back, because that could give advantage to the one team.

Justin ODell.9517:

What do we do when we have to give up on waiting for the player to reconnect?

Continue the match after the time window has closed. If the one team still manages to win with 4 vs. 5, they deserve to go through. If not… well they loose.

Justin ODell.9517:

How do we handle trolls that disconnect on purpose?

Take a count of people who disconnect on purpose, eliminate them from any future tournaments.

Justin ODell.9517:

Do we count a disconnect as part of dishonor?

No. Certainly not.

Justin ODell.9517:

Do we disable progression and rewards for a game that doesn’t finish because of a disconnect?

All games should finish, if you just continue the game even if it’s 4v5.

Justin ODell.9517:

Do custom arena owners want to be able to pause through a command?

It would be useful for player-moderated tournaments. I think it should be in.

Just a thought that doesn’t just apply to this feature,

If esport features become the focus, maybe more of the esport crowd would gain more interest.

This feature should be custom arena only and the owner of the arena can give people permission to pause with a command. When the game is paused the game timer stops and everyone stops moving, skill cast times and buffs freeze.

Gotta love how people are responding to a 6 month old post like it just happened yesterday.

Bhawb.7408:

Gotta love how people are responding to a 6 month old post like it just happened yesterday.

point is, it happened yesterday.

A fantastic idea and I hope it gets implemented.

today disconnects in the tourney were embarrasing

Something to handle disconnects really should be implemented.

The challenge is how do you do this in a fair way. Because builds that are high risk, high reward get a huge disadvantage if you just pause when a DC happens. You also don’t want to implement something that can be taken advantage of and gamed.

Could a permanent stun be applied to all the players until the pause is unchecked? That effectively pauses everything without changing how the game works.

Fluffball.8307:

Could a permanent stun be applied to all the players until the pause is unchecked? That effectively pauses everything without changing how the game works.

Cooldowns, timers, currently capped points, and currently applied condis then become the issue, as theres no way to freeze those, or at least there is no mechanic I can think of that makes you immune to already applied condi damage. We can change the scores of the game via server commands but theres no way to change a timer at the moment.

Why not have 6man team? The 6th would be the replacement to kick in if someone DC or is having a heart attack. And that would add a little more depth to the comp strategy.

good thread nec.

anet arguments got #rekt!