Guild Wars 2

Justin ODell.9517:

We’re aware of that, and we’ve discussed alternatives. Right now we’re more focusing on nuking the 4v5 issue.

Also, if you come back you will still receive reward track, etc. awards.

I personally had more games where a player dc’d at some point than I had 4v5s from the beginning.

It used to be that, if you dced in the match after getting points, you’d still get credit for it regardless of whether the match ended with you having 0 points at the end. Now I find that’s not true. The worst part is that I often dc towards the end and don’t have time to get points before it ends. In that case, I get nothing and, even if I do, the reward track only accounts for the time you spent playing after you logged back in. Are you saying that it will account for all the time you played since the beginning of the match now or only the time you played after the dc?

Instead of punishing players so hard for d/c, an actual 4v5 system is needed.

The option to just deny any rating for the game because it turned out 4v5 punishes far too many players for the actions of one. It leaves room to be exploited to either avoid a rating loss for your team or to deny the opponent’s gain. In cod, “dashboarding” was used to avoid losses and if you had host, would give everyone in the game a loss. And it was exploited CONSTANTLY.

Now, if the system were created properly, a way to keep one player out to continue the match would be ideal. Simply put, when it becomes 4v5, the 5 man team gets an option to volunteer to sit out until there are even numbers again. This will prevent organized teams from losing a key part of their comp. Whoever decided to sit out, should receive max rewards/rating and maybe even a bonus for their inconvenience. If no one volunteers, whoever is out of combat will start and will be rotated in on deaths.

Sitting out to keep teams balanced isn’t punishment. It’s good for both teams to have a fair game and retains the fun instead of a lopsided boring 4v5. Instead of a system that only discourages 4v5, one that fixes the problem itself seems better.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Justin ODell.9517:

Saiyan.1704:

He can join the game. It’s just an automatic -3 (loss) for him.

-3 to -1. Depending on their odds of victory.

And that is clearly a problem with the new system. Instead of offering motivation for a DC player to log back into the game and try to push a victory, it does the opposite. It effectively tells them to screw up. In other words, temporary 4v5 situations turn into full time 4v5 matches. It makes an existing problem worse.

There is a motivation for returning after being dc’ed.

That is instead of taking a terrible loss -3, your taking a -1.

People who dc are bad for the game, this is 2014, it isn’t 1990s. Internet connection has made huge improvements since then, there should no reason why you dc, unless you have bad connection.

Which if you have bad connection your putting your team at a disadvantage, and I don’t like losing because people who have bad connections determine my fate, rather than a fair game.

If anything there should a button called, ‘would you like a bad connection person on your tpvp game. yes. no’. Count people who dc’ed recently as bad connecting people, and they get faced with the people who like having people who dc on there team (none) and people who don’t want them on there team (nobody wants a intermittent connection teammate).

If you have intermittent connection, you obviously shouldn’t be playing online rating type games.

uberkingkong.8041:

People who dc are bad for the game, this is 2014, it isn’t 1990s. Internet connection has made huge improvements since then, there should no reason why you dc, unless you have bad connection.

Which if you have bad connection your putting your team at a disadvantage, and I don’t like losing because people who have bad connections determine my fate, rather than a fair game.

If anything there should a button called, ‘would you like a bad connection person on your tpvp game. yes. no’. Count people who dc’ed recently as bad connecting people, and they get faced with the people who like having people who dc on there team (none) and people who don’t want them on there team (nobody wants a intermittent connection teammate).

If you have intermittent connection, you obviously shouldn’t be playing online rating type games.

This is so much ignorant, it can’t be more.
Seriously everyone get’s sometimes dc’s for whatever of reasons.
Maybe it’s your 1 sec dc because of your provider, or something temporarely cuts of your wireless lan (some magnetic field or whatever) or whatever reasons a dc could ever have.
There is no such thing as “2014 → good internet connection”.
This is a mmo, so millions of players play it, everyone has different settings (computer spec, internet connection, current rl situation).
A mmo has to be made so that as many players as possible can play it, or it will at some point be left without any players, so it has to consider every player and every possible position the player can be in.
This is why you only get the rdy prompt with the new feature during beeing in the heart of the mists – because some players have loading screens up to 1 minute or more, which will result in them abandoning the match because they didnt get the rdy promt.

There will always be people with dc’s and they want to play the game too, they payed for it – so you can’t forbid them to play it.

There is no 100% solution for this problem. You are accepting this problem the moment when you start playing a game that relies on communication over the internet.
So if you say that people that have dc’s aren’t allowed to play the game you have a wrong understanding of what the game is about.

The only way to solve the uneven team issue is making it impossible.
Changes in things like scoring or rewards will not only solve nothing, they may even create more problems.
And you obviously can’t prevent people from disconnecting, since it’s often something completely out of any one person’s control.

So far, I could only come up with this idea that prevents uneven matches in structured by putting people in the team with more players ‘on hold’ until the people in the other team comes back, or a replacement is found from the pool of people being queued for matches in structured. Getting replacements would be a bit easier after the upcoming changes, though, as they’ll be picked from one single queue and there would be a new code to pick new players.

The problem is finding a way to prevent uneven teams altogether that isn’t boring for someone in the team with more numbers, as one person in one team would have to wait until a replacement is picked so the teams are even again.

For hotjoin, it’s much harder since there’s no queues from which to take people to substitute (you can’t force someone queue for structured to go to hotjoin, but maybe there could be a message asking them to volunteer to balance a 4v5 hotjoin match), but at least joining the team with more points should be prevented unless you have a someone you ‘know’ in that team, like a friend, a guildie or someone in your party. People almost always joins the team with more points, and as the match goes on, people keep joining the arena see it’s a 4v5 with the team of 5 having more score and leave, and the winning team usually keeps getting a bigger and bigger advantage as the match goes on, which makes it more likely for people to leave instead joining. It’s a very negative positive feedback loop! So maybe there should even be bonus rank and reward track progress for joining the losing side of a match in progress.

Justin ODell.9517:

DiogoSilva.7089:

And that is clearly a problem with the new system. Instead of offering motivation for a DC player to log back into the game and try to push a victory, it does the opposite. It effectively tells them to screw up. In other words, temporary 4v5 situations turn into full time 4v5 matches. It makes an existing problem worse.

We’re aware of that, and we’ve discussed alternatives. Right now we’re more focusing on nuking the 4v5 issue.

Also, if you come back you will still receive reward track, etc. awards.

A 1min grace period for the dc player would make the new system a bit better.

I dont think it would be disorienting to invite a new player from outside of the match. It is more discouraging to keep playing 4v5! As long as the game does not effect the match much or increase the rewards for the person who was willing to join the already ongoing game, I don’t see why people will be unhappy about this implementation.

You cannot fix players attitude anyway. Afking, 4v5 from start, ragequit, dc,… I think the new system itself will fix it, since you will lose " less" rating for losing match.

The actual leaderboard is way too volatile, and a bad luck serie can put you from #150 to 90%. We will see how it will be anyway, but on the long term, losing -10 rating from bad luck shouldn’t be hurting that much someone’s rank..

Just increase the amount of rank/glory points you get when you are in 4v5 situation when the match ends in loss for the remaining 4 players. Instead of giving 300~500 rank points for loss, make it 500~700. That way the economy won’t be destroyed from track rewards, players at least get some consolidation, and people will still try in 4v5 situation to get more rank points. For those who have reached level 80 aka dragon, give them a special reward exclusive to level 80 only.

Honestly, I think there’s a few ways that things can go regarding the 4v5 situation.

For a grace disconnect period, I’d say 1 minute. Any longer is too crippling for a team.
A player that DOES rejoin, shouldn’t be penalized. An honorable fighter always finishes a fight, even on the downslope. If they lose, they should have their ranking affected just as they would for the rest of their team. That way, there is still incentive to remain playing. (Lessened penalty or victory and rank/track progression versus straight up dishonor.)
As many mentioned innocent disconnects usually don’t last long and a DC shouldn’t snatch a possible victory from a player.

If we aren’t allowing allowing volunteers midway through a match, then the 4 man team should have their ranking penalty reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0) determined by the system prior in accordance to their chance of winning.

If we are allowing volunteers, the person selected during/after that 1 min mark will not suffer any penalty to their ranking if it is a loss upon volunteering. (Especially since they also don’t get full match bonuses anyways much like in Hotjoin matches given how the system works).
This would still allow a previously 4v5 team to still come back with the extra volunteer. The volunteer doesn’t lose anything by doing so and only has something to gain as long as the team does emerge victorious.
The ‘disorientation’ effect noted prior will not be as much as an issue as one would think in my opinion as long as they are notified that they are volunteering to sub-in and not merely starting a new match.