Guild Wars 2

I haven’t been a huge PvP’er in GW2, but trying to get into it.

Bought a copy of the game for a friend, we went off to sPvP.
We decided to just do HotJoin sPvP while learning the basics.
Note we live in Australia so a smidge laggy net.

Round 1, Full by the time we load.
Round 2, I get a slot, full by time buddy loads.
Round 3, We get in, but in different teams. All fine, except 1 team has 2 more players than the other and it’s 300points ahead.

2 Other friends I made get GW2, will only pvp IF they can get in same team with me. But don’t want to do torny’s from the start.

So that’s PvP buddys from other games that are simply put off.

Next bit about the laggy joins is, Im always last to get to pick what team. Which doesn’t really matter. But, If people hotjoin. I’ll be forced to spect / not get slots with groups I’ve run with for multi-rounds.

The buddy I actually got to do some with me. Said, he tried solo next day. Got in a round ended in a loss before he got to attack someone else. Next round, spectator. Went back to Mist, hot joined to get spectator again. They are over PvP here as he’s spent lots more time on loading screen than playing.

My next gripe… Balance.
Just did a round, 4vs2. The 4 were all Ramshakers & Avengers. Other guy I was with was a Gladiator.
I guess we joined just as others quit, but basically first step out of starting zone was invis thief stun, press stun breaker, fear. Dead.
The both of us got CC locked down and killed without being able to press more than brake stun once 6 times before I quit.

It would be really nice to have a ‘I want in a round, with my buddy on the same team’ a ‘I want in a round with people around my same Rank’. Pr-decided when I que, not trying to fit myself in after my crappy AU net has loaded.

try tournies
i don’t understand why hotjoin still exists, it is just diverting people away from rated tournies, and giving bad 1st experience to new players (not that the game isn’t bad anyway).
you can 1) play with your friends and 2) have a chance to play vs others of your similar skills
the name may sound daunting, but it’s not even a real “tournament”. it is just 1 team vs another and then you both get kicked back to mists when someone wins.

their is no diffence from 5v5 hotjoins and tournies except you get farmed by premades when join tournaments not with a full grp and you destroy your leaderboard ranking (should you care about)

so dont tell new players go tournies – tournament is worst mode ever

I play from New Zealand neighbour. Spvp as far as learning curves goes is a near vertical line. Nothing in PvE is remotely similiar. It would have been nice in the lvl 80 area’s they has less foes, but each was far more difficult to beat and evaded, used combo fields and typical skills you’d see an actual player use. Unfortunately each of you just needs to cut your teeth as individuals then join tpvp and relearned all your skills again. It is a shame there is no middle ground. Either play solo, or join against teams you have practiced and are well versed.

Romek.4201:

their is no diffence from 5v5 hotjoins and tournies except you get farmed by premades when join tournaments not with a full grp and you destroy your leaderboard ranking (should you care about)

why should they care about leaderboard ranking when they are begginers? you expect begginer to be high rated? i dont think so… they just need to play few games to get placed on the right spot equal to their skill and they will be getting enemies on their level so if they will fall enough, they will get matched against bad teams and maybe average solo queuers etc, thats how it is supposed to work

and when they earn enough skill, its not hard to fight their way up in the leaderboard if they deserve it, matchmaking system will notice winning streak and match them with better enemy and winning against better enemy earn even more rating (rating isnt glory or rank points, its some hidden matchmaking personal number, just so you know)

If you want any half-decent sPvP experience just steer far away from hot-joins. The only occasion when i join hot-join is to get used to a new class that i’ve never played before… Just so i get used to using the right weapon skill/utility at the right moment.

If you guys know what your builds are supposed to be doing and if you can play them well there’s no reason not to go into tournies… After all if hot-join was removed there would be way more teams playing the tournies, which can’t be bad huh?

samo.1054:

If you want any half-decent sPvP experience just steer far away from hot-joins. The only occasion when i join hot-join is to get used to a new class that i’ve never played before… Just so i get used to using the right weapon skill/utility at the right moment.

or for solo join daily achievments

Romek.4201:

their is no diffence from 5v5 hotjoins and tournies except you get farmed by premades when join tournaments not with a full grp and you destroy your leaderboard ranking (should you care about)

so dont tell new players go tournies – tournament is worst mode ever

There is a big dfference between 5v5 hotjoin and tourny. People in hotjoin play for their own points, they are farming glory which often makes them quite useless (3 people standing on a point until it gets capped… duh yay 10 glory for meeeh), while in tourny people acutally try to make their team win.

I’d rather loose to a premade than play a completely pointless game where everyone is soloing. Some people learning their new build, others farming their glory points and some people just scrimmaging around playing team death match…

Thanks for the response.

Other thing Im wondering about and find frustrating as a starter player… AFK people… There’s no report/get rid of them, just give up and try again in a new group?

What’s really the go here? Find a guild that’s into tPvP and willing to teach me the roaps.

Well if you want some serious team pvp then finding a bunch of people that you can play with daily is your objective. Nothing new here… I guess that’s pretty natural.

It all pretty much boils down to how serious you want to do this spvp. I’m more of a casual player… I play about 2 hours per day, can’t afford to play more on most days, so I’m not super serious about it all. Of course soloQ would be a very positive thing. However I don’t really care much when stuff goes wrong in tPvP, I don’t really consider it worthy to bother me that much…

However I have to knock on the wood here, that in about 30 matches I’ve had recently I never was in a 4v5 situation, nor did I have any afk players in tpvp. Guess I’m just lucky. Now that I mentioned it, my luck is prolly bound to change today…

It is a serious issue I tried to adress in this thread not very long ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Hotjoin-it-is-time-to-let-go/first

Basically it is impossible to play casually with your friends on the same team for a complete game start to finish unless you play rated!
Which increases the odds of facing experienced premade groups in an environment that will punish you for being a new player.

Thanks Stof! I +1’ed ya post.

Stof, you are right, but they will never give up on hotjoin.
The only monetization scheme (which was poorly thought out) that pvp has is tied to it.

Stof.9584:

It is a serious issue I tried to adress in this thread not very long ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Hotjoin-it-is-time-to-let-go/first

Basically it is impossible to play casually with your friends on the same team for a complete game start to finish unless you play rated!
Which increases the odds of facing experienced premade groups in an environment that will punish you for being a new player.

Ugh, so hotjoins are no good fo casual play with friends, and neither is tPvP?

I usually play solo and for me hot join is a mixed bag. I do try to help my team win each match I enter and don’t worry too much about rank and glory. When I play against others doing the same the matches can be a lot of fun, but when facing teams with even two or three people coordinating against your team, the matches quickly become lopsided.

The big problem is that hot join is the only non-tournament option. So you end up with both solo players and casual groups playing against each other. Not good for either side as the casual group players develop sloppy play habits and the solo players don’t have a lot of fun.

Yeh, I just can’t seem to get any fun/joy in the PvP here.

I’ve loved PvP since Ultima Online. Even enjoyed it for RuneScape.
I’ll get sucked in and pvp for 7hrs sometimes even 11hrs, WoW/Rift/SW-TOR.

I can’t even stand to do my PvP Daily here.

Today it’s get in, 2 players down 70 vs 500 score.
Next round, 90% of the other team just stood near our starting area, killing as we left base. So we got out and capped stuff, but got farmed for about 20 deaths, CC locked trying to leave the base.
Next round, 1 afk’s at loading spot, other guy just runs laps around the starting zone refusing to leave.

Ye, i kno wat u mean Bweaty, the ‘Play Now’ button has given me some bad matchups too :P but i think that’s just because eventually all high rank players switch to teams with other high rank players until the winning team looks like this (30,24,40,28,13,8) and the losing team looks like this (8,11,3,1,5,20) in terms of rank.

You kno wat i mean :P but overall i have luck joining matches with 1 less than the total player limit, for instance 9/20 for a 5v5 and 15/20 for an 8v8. Then i get the last slot.

If this game had enough PvPers, wouldn’t rank brackets be a lot of fun, Rank 1-9, 10-19, 20-29, etc. for a match making system. Then at least, the server browser could be filled exclusively with Custom Arenas which would display them to the public easier, instead of being shoved at the bottom below all these ‘Server 117’s.

If you hover over the hotjoin server it will state max team size, either 5 or 8. Use that in conjunction with the amount of players in the room to tell if you will get a slot or not.
Also hotjoin is like joining a server in any standard online game such as battlefield/counterstrike etc. that there is no balance, just luck as to what team you join. Hotjoin also has no effect on your ranking on the leaderboard if that is what your concerned about, so you can die as much as you want.

Tobbygnome.6793:

You kno wat i mean :P but overall i have luck joining matches with 1 less than the total player limit, for instance 9/20 for a 5v5 and 15/20 for an 8v8. Then i get the last slot.

This is what I’ve been doing, and been enjoying it to some extent. I win 99% of the time simply because people are so busy killing each other that they don’t bother to cap points. I usually run from point to point and occasionally get a good 1v1 while everyone else is clusterkittening around the skyhammer or whatever.

I don’t know about all these people recommending tPvP. Every single time I’ve tried tournies, I just leave incredibly frustrated within 2-3 rounds (I play solo, so have to do solo queue). Usually end up either A) getting stomped by a premade or getting stomped because someone doesn’t join and it’s 4v5. IMO, tPvP is an utterly terrible game mode unless you’re going in with a premade group. I would much rather do casual play.