Guild Wars 2

Cool stuff mucho <3o

This change means that anyone can queue their party for ranked or unranked arenas, which will prompt the other party members to confirm.

What will happen if a teammate is on a loading screen?
What will happen if a teammate declines?

@Teutos from reading the article, it seems that the system will replace your teammate (or however many from your party decline) with others from the queue as appropriate before the match begins.

Changes look great, only thing I’m a little concerned about is the 0 forgiveness policy as it comes to d/cs midgame. I think it would be best to allot each player a certain amount of disconnect time per game (maybe 1 minute) before they acquire any dishonor. You just really want to punish leavers and afkers, not people that have an honest short disconnect in the middle of the match. Other games manage to handle this gracefully so I’d imagine there’s some type of middle ground that could be reached.

Otherwise, I love the map voting implementation (the fact that it’s not a strict majority vote but instead a weighted random roll was a nice touch) and the per-class MMR. Can’t wait to try it out!

cymerdown.4103:

Changes look great, only thing I’m a little concerned about is the 0 forgiveness policy as it comes to d/cs midgame. I think it would be best to allot each player a certain amount of disconnect time per game (maybe 1 minute) before they acquire any dishonor. You just really want to punish leavers and afkers, not people that have an honest short disconnect in the middle of the match. Other games manage to handle this gracefully so I’d imagine there’s some type of middle ground that could be reached.

I agree with this. I’m all for punishment, but this zero tolerance is a bit much. There have been plenty of times where this game has massive DCs. There really should be some type of grace period.

But I guess we just have to go with the flow.

I see what you did there ^

I’m not concerned with dc’s as much but it is a valid point. Otherwise, really really great changes. I saw all of these suggestions from the community. Well done.

In my opinion this is the greatest change to the game Anet has released, quite possibly ever. One question, can we get a mystic forge back in the heart of the mists? Its one of the few reasons I leave regularly is to throw junk into it. Can’t wait for this update, thank you devs!

I’m a little disappointed by this:

To ensure players are ready to accept, they will now be asked to be in the Heart of the Mists and ready to play when they queue

Will this also kick you out of the queue if you leave HotM? I’m hoping queue times will be shorter after the update, but it would still be nice to be able to pop into some hotjoin or go cap a camp in wvw while waiting for your match.

omg that new system u made is awesome,ty very much good sir developer

What will happen to the people that just give up mid-match and afk the entire round? I’ve been in plenty of matches that were close until a player decided it just wasn’t worth it and stopped playing. They move around so they don’t get timed out, but do nothing for the game.

Could a timer be added to leave the starting area so if someone decides to do this they either need to take the dishonor, continue playing, or be kicked?

^ Report ’em for griefing and pray something happens. :p

Mysticjedi.6053:

What will happen to the people that just give up mid-match and afk the entire round? I’ve been in plenty of matches that were close until a player decided it just wasn’t worth it and stopped playing. They move around so they don’t get timed out, but do nothing for the game.

Could a timer be added to leave the starting area so if someone decides to do this they either need to take the dishonor, continue playing, or be kicked?

will u guys ever be happy?It seems no matter what they do there are some randoms posting about afk people.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Regarding people AFK in-match: The dishonor system is much more flexible now in a way where we can add different severity penalties to any action. We’ve discussed tying dishonor to conduct reports, but we have not decided on anything.

It is still the case that if someone is kicked for being afk, they receive disconnect dishonor.

I beg you to reconsider this. Because there is no difference between someone that AFK and someone who just rages on /t chat and then decides to troll our team by letting the opponent cap points or feeding them kills.

There is the need of a report function to apply dishonor as well. It could just be a report option of ’SPvP grieving" or just flat out grieving.
I understand that this system might be a bit tricky or could make groups bully innocents, but if done right, it is easily avoidable. Like racking up reports from different people of different matches.

If only there was a way of attaching a small phrase to reports kinda like bugs, or maybe screenshots too, this would make the job of the people getting reports 100% times more easier.

For map voting, is there a “random” or “I don’t really care which map” option, similar to Mario Kart track selection?

Someone who doesn’t participate in the match, but is not AFK can be voted off by majority alike map voting. It would always take 9 or 8 people (out of the 10 players in total, in the match) to vote “Yes”, so that one person who is not participating can finally get kicked.

I like the UI for map selection — cool design

manveruppd.7601:

I’m a little disappointed by this:

To ensure players are ready to accept, they will now be asked to be in the Heart of the Mists and ready to play when they queue

Will this also kick you out of the queue if you leave HotM? I’m hoping queue times will be shorter after the update, but it would still be nice to be able to pop into some hotjoin or go cap a camp in wvw while waiting for your match.

Can we get clarification on this?

The way I interpret the blog post is as follows:

Suppose I am in WvW solo. When I queue for sPvP, I get a popup to accept the queue, and when I accept, I am sent to HotM, where I must stay until the match is ready, then I click accept to enter the match. If I leave HotM before the match is ready, I am kicked from the queue and accrue dishonor.

My concern with this is that under the current system, I am able to stay in WvW, or Hotjoin, or PvE while in queue waiting for the match to be ready. This allows me to be actively playing something, anything, right up until the match is ready. But from the sounds of it, the new system would require me to idle in HotM the entire time I am in the queue.

Am I interpreting this correctly?

Not happy about the requirement to be in HotM to queue. This doesn’t help to improve PvP growth if less enthusiastic players are forced to sit in the boring PvP lobby instead of playing PvE and WvW while they wait for match. I think many of them will simply queue less. I personally love to roam PvE and WvW while I queue, and I know by watching streams that other players do too.

Since a pre-entry ‘ready-check’ is being added, why do we need this other inhibitor? I’m sure in the old system it was occasionally a problem if someone became involved in their WvW or PvE play and decided to skip their PvP tournament queue pop. But now with this new ready-check it is no longer a factor.

Please let us queue for tournaments from anywhere.

(I would advocate adding a PvP build/gear tab to your PvP statistics page though, accessible from anywhere in the game…so that players can ensure that their PvP half is always ready)

Everything else is great thanks

Very nice sounding improvements. I like the match confirmation requirements and map voting. These will certainly make PvP more appealing.

Also I was very surprised to hear that Hearts of the Mist will have a Bank, TP and Laurel Vendor. I’m really pleased to hear these additions, make no mistake, but won’t this make the player cities much less busy? I suppose the crafting stations and Mystic Toilet will always have people around them, but these changes seem likely to make Heart of the Mists the new main social hub for the whole of the game.

One quick question, we need to be in Heart of the Mists to join the queue but can players then leave the Heart of the Mist if the queue takes a while? Or are you bumped out of the queue if you leave the Heart?

Celtus.8456:

Not happy about the requirement to be in HotM to queue. This doesn’t help to improve PvP growth if less enthusiastic players are forced to sit in the boring PvP lobby instead of playing PvE and WvW while they wait for match. I think many of them will simply queue less. I personally love to roam PvE and WvW while I queue, and I know by watching streams that other players do too.

This was my concern as well and why I asked for the clarification. As long as queues are popping it’s fine but don’t expect players to sit around and wait for extended periods in the Heart even if there is a bank and such. They’ll just drop the queue and find something else to do. Your point about the match confirmation already being enough of an inhibitor is a good one IMO.

Although with the Heart becoming a more active social hub, perhaps this will be less of a problem.

Alternatively, perhaps they could give higher matchmaking priority to players who stay in the Heart, and lower priority to people who leave to do other things but want to stay in the queue?

Nice changes in that blog, Evan and PvP team. Good job so far, keep it up!

Thank you for the clarification!

what if a person as a legit reason to go afk; can there be a “man-up” clause where the player takes responisbility for leaving and takes some penalty but doesn’t acquire huge dishonor? a gold price maybe?

@Evan, do you guys have plans to use the map selection feature to get some hard numbers on what maps players like and dislike for the first time? It’d be really cool if you guys could rank maps by how often they got voted for at the end of seasons.

It’s nice that AFKers are being addressed, but I’d also like to see something done about 4v5. Something like a system that delays 5th man from spawning until someone dies. People quit matches for all sorts of reasons regardless of dishonor, a system in place to keep the match balanced for the rest of the game will benefit both sides.

promisebreaer.4967:

what if a person as a legit reason to go afk; can there be a “man-up” clause where the player takes responisbility for leaving and takes some penalty but doesn’t acquire huge dishonor? a gold price maybe?

That would defeat the whole point of the system though.
And even if you have a legit reason to go AFK it will only be a very short punishment at first, and if you somehow manage to get so many legit reasons to AFK that you will get week-long dishonor punishments maybe sPvP is not for you?

Shanks.2907:

It’s nice that AFKers are being addressed, but I’d also like to see something done about 4v5. Something like a system that delays 5th man from spawning until someone dies. People quit matches for all sorts of reasons regardless of dishonor, a system in place to keep the match balanced for the rest of the game will benefit both sides.

I don’t think that basically punishing one team because someone from the other team left is a good solution. Especially not since it can be used quite easily to grief.

Evan Lesh.3295:

We’re taking multiple steps to make waiting as little a burden as possible. We’ve added service NPC’s to the lobby, and the new matchmaking should be making matches much quicker than before. If a better solution arises, we will surely jump on it, but right now we balanced the trade offs as best we could.

Please, consider adding a very very hard and long jumping puzzle or more NPC to fight with, ingame leaderboards to check, minigames, etc.!

sorry sir, but Im afraid I didn’t understood Dishonor system well. How do you mean slowly fades off and gets longer? Can this be described more clearly?

Thank you in advance

Moving hot join back to 8v8 I hope then as all matches there are 5v4 but group voting etc is just silly overkill for a mash-em up game mode.

Amazing this upgrade look WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more professional and neat.

Thanks guys, this motivates to keep in this game.

Faeyd.5094:

Moving hot join back to 8v8 I hope then as all matches there are 5v4 but group voting etc is just silly overkill for a mash-em up game mode.

This is just not gonna happen to a hotjoin. There isn’t a massive queue of players as it is, bringing it further down to a handful of active matches will only harm the game further.

If anything I hope future modes will have smaller team member requirements as a viable option. 8v8 would be better suited to a GvG mode.

GOSU.9574:

Faeyd.5094:

Moving hot join back to 8v8 I hope then as all matches there are 5v4 but group voting etc is just silly overkill for a mash-em up game mode.

This is just not gonna happen to a hotjoin. There isn’t a massive queue of players as it is, bringing it further down to a handful of active matches will only harm the game further.

If anything I hope future modes will have smaller team member requirements as a viable option. 8v8 would be better suited to a GvG mode.

The reason why it died is because it was forced into 5v4. This is pretty obvious. The 8v8 crowd left leaving what… 5v5 aspirationals? Silly idea. Solo Q is for wannabes, 8v8 was for folks who value fights over standing on points in a certain order.

Mia Crazymike.1780:

Someone who doesn’t participate in the match, but is not AFK can be voted off by majority alike map voting. It would always take 9 or 8 people (out of the 10 players in total, in the match) to vote “Yes”, so that one person who is not participating can finally get kicked.

Probably better to restrict the vote to their own party. The other party gains an advantage by keeping them there.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Nabrok.9023:

For map voting, is there a “random” or “I don’t really care which map” option, similar to Mario Kart track selection?

If you don’t pick a map, there will just be 9/10 selection that are rolled on.

What happens if there is a tie?

Fantastic.5298:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Nabrok.9023:

For map voting, is there a “random” or “I don’t really care which map” option, similar to Mario Kart track selection?

If you don’t pick a map, there will just be 9/10 selection that are rolled on.

What happens if there is a tie?

Read the article, it’s weighted roll, not an outright selection.

Evan Lesh.3295:

You only get dishonor if you decline the match-ready prompt.

I’m not sure if I understand this clearly. Are you saying that if a ready check pops up, and for some reason out of sudden I decide to cancel my match by clicking the “cancel” button in the prompt, I get immediately “dishonored”?

If that’s how it works, then I disagree with it. One of the things I like the most about match-ready check boxes, is that they are the last opportunity for me to change ideas. Maybe I forgot to do something? Maybe a friend just came online, and I did not have enough time to cancel my queue to add him into my party? In games like League of Legends, situations like those offer perfect opportunities to cancel a “match found” pop-up before any sort of punishment kicks in. But by your post, it seems like canceling it will punish you.

It all looks great, thanks for all the hard work.

thanks josh, evan !

the update looks great!

looking forward to it!

Evan Lesh.3295:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Are you saying that if a ready check pops up, and for some reason out of sudden I decide to cancel my match by clicking the “cancel” button in the prompt, I get immediately “dishonored”?

Yes, this is how it works. Otherwise people would just grief the queue over and over. The amount of dishonor you get for declining the match is minor, so it really shouldn’t affect well-intentioned players. We’re talking about minutes here, not days like in the old system.

I understand the idea, but it does seems a bit too stressful to “well-intentioned players” compared to how some other games do it.

Is it possible to get a compromise? For example, why not having dishonor only kick in if the player declices a match two+ times in a row, and/ or too many times a day?

DiogoSilva.7089:

I understand the idea, but it does seems a bit too stressful to “well-intentioned players” compared to how some other games do it.

Is it possible to get a compromise? For example, why not having dishonor only kick in if the player declices a match two+ times in a row, and/ or too many times a day?

Why queue up for a match if you are not going to join a match though?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Evan Lesh.3295:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Are you saying that if a ready check pops up, and for some reason out of sudden I decide to cancel my match by clicking the “cancel” button in the prompt, I get immediately “dishonored”?

Yes, this is how it works. Otherwise people would just grief the queue over and over. The amount of dishonor you get for declining the match is minor, so it really shouldn’t affect well-intentioned players. We’re talking about minutes here, not days like in the old system.

I understand the idea, but it does seems a bit too stressful to “well-intentioned players” compared to how some other games do it.

Is it possible to get a compromise? For example, why not having dishonor only kick in if the player declices a match two+ times in a row, and/ or too many times a day?

Why are you gonna stress about a few minute timeout? It’s not the same kind of dishonor. It’s not even going to be like the 30 minute ‘deserter’ debuffs across many mmos/mobas.

lordkrall.7241:

Why queue up for a match if you are not going to join a match though?

Usually because of a sudden/ unexpected change of plans.

Isn’t that why check-ready pop ups exist in the first place?

Sure, those things can happen. But if they happen so frequently that you will actually get hurt by the lock-out maybe PvP is not the mode you should be playing in the first place?

It would also be rather weird that those sudden/unexpected change of plans suddenly turned up after the match is about to start, rather than during the queue for finding a match in the first place.