Guild Wars 2

The problem most people complain about when it comes to hot join (aka practice mode) is that most matches turn into an uneven fight within probably the first 5 minutes of the match, after which it all goes down hill.

This is mainly caused because new players who enter the game have the ability to make an even match uneven. Most of the times they pick the team that is already ahead and that makes comebacks even more difficult for the losing team which then results to players on the losing team to depart and force autobalance to trigger.

One possible way to make matches a bit more fair is to implement a reservation system like below:

• When a player tries to join a team, if the match is already balanced (2v2, 3v3, 4v4, etc), they wait in reserve for that particular team instead of entering the fight right away.
• When another player joins, they are only allowed to join the team with the least number of <players in match> + <reserve players>. When this happens, the first player in the reservation queue for the opposing team automatically joins the fight.

This forces teams to always start even.
Of course, this system can’t prevent uneven matches caused by players leaving, but there’s not much the game can do to remedy that in a hot join game mode, but it can at least remove part of the problem.

So what do you think?

They most certainly can and should punish leaving, even in hot join. You’re hurting the experience of other players by quitting and it puts a bad taste in new players having to hop out of their spawn only to be melted.

I wouldn’t say make the punishment severe since hot join isn’t all that serious, but there should be something like 3 minutes of no queue the first time, leave again now its 5 minutes, leave again now its 15 minutes , and so on and so fourth.

Now there are instances with people having RL events and either have to leave or afk, that’s fine but again that’s their choice and put them on a scaling punishment for that. After all it is a game so if they have to leave to use the restroom or tend to a kid or grab a drink they can spare some time outside of the lobby letting their team get out numbered. If they think its cruel, well you shouldn’t of entered the match then. The only way to lessen this punishment would be completing a match but the ratio would most certainly not be 1:1, more like if you leave a match you have to play 3 full matches to remove the debuff.

As for auto balance, I couldn’t agree more. They should not let someone join until another player is going to join the other team to balance it out. A common problem however is people get forced to swap teams and will enter spectator to let auto balance cycle through again and get back on their team which was winning (can’t lie, when I am at a 150 point lead and I get swapped best believe I try to get back). Simple fix I think would make entering spectator mode disable you from joining a team for a short duration (2 minutes?) and remove this forced auto balance. It’s a little unfair to force an auto balance especially if people are with friends. If someone wants to volunteer which I see often, great but don’t make the flaws of hotjoin affect how people want to play by making them swap sides. Its a terrible design to let other players punish you when they leave.

Lastly, spawn camping needs to be addressed. Ever enter a match when the score is 300+ to 0 and the other team is full capped sitting outside your base? How is that enjoyable for anyone? In a case like that the losing team (for hot join only) should get a portal to one of the objectives at their base to bypass the feeding frenzy so players will be less inclinded to sit at a stand still until the match ends.

i think they think they “fixed” it by calling it “practice” so yeah that’s it.

we’re not getting any more “fixes” for hotjoin.

they already “fixed” it by calling it “practice” mode.