Practice Arena balance
This is a problem. I think the easiest way might be to prevent people from joining the winning team even if the numbers are in their favor. This will at least get some games to even out a little.
Right now:
1. Initial fight happens.
2. People on the losing side leave.
3. Autobalance kicks in.
4. “Spectators” join the winning side right away.
Easy fix: remove all rewards and progression from practice!
=> Ppl can actually practice in practice mode when incentive to faceroll is removed
=> Dueling/sparring etiquette makes games less hostile, players can talk to each other
=> Friendly noob experience
=> Larger player pool for unranked/ranked
=> Everyone is happy
I play Practice a lot, for the reasons you’ve stated, among others, and I honestly do not think that things are worse/better than before, although there’s been a definite increase of trash talk these last weeks (with a solid trend in “hacking” accusations). Maybe you were just unlucky that day? (was it a weekend day by chance?)
There are ways to have fun in 4v5 games, when you belong to the fated 4. Personally, I see these games as opportunities to get better, especially in my rotations – you learn when to simply decap and not cap, how to +1 more efficiently and so forth… When the game is too unbalanced though, or has too much spectator abuse, then I just switch arenas.
Hi,
Easy fix: remove all rewards and progression from practice!
This is definitely a possible approach, although I’m not sure the benefits would be as clear as you expect them to be.
=> Ppl can actually practice in practice mode when incentive to faceroll is removed
The biggest incentive still remains: winning. And most players want to win so badly they don’t care about sportmanship.
Personally, I go to Practice either to play non-meta builds (because I’d get insulted if I were to do that in Unranked / Ranked games) or to have fun brawling, seeking good fights before conquest.
=> Dueling/sparring etiquette makes games less hostile, players can talk to each other
This is a dangerous way of thinking. I’d say that players who want to duel should simply go to 1v1 servers. Rotating correctly include how to +1 the opponent, so by nature practice should not respect duelling conventions. People whining about “1v2” or “1v3” simply demonstrate their inability to read the flow of the game.
=> Friendly noob experience
That could indeed be the case. Still, there are lots of players that join practice just to crush the occasional beginner, or simply to avoid uncomfortable situations in ranked games, where your “real” level can be more easily decrypted.
=> Larger player pool for unranked/ranked
Indeed, and that would be a good thing, provided the matchmaking works correctly and groups players together in regards of their actual strength.
Regards.
Yeah, I kind of like the idea of removing or severely reducing incentive to team swap and what not. However, I think this would just reduce the number of ppl in pvp and that is not something Anet or the players would want.
I think they need to do something about joining teams when they are imbalanced or starting a match when its 2 vs 1…
Some ideas:
-Start a match when the numbers are even and don’t let someone join one team unless someone else is also queuing to join the other team.
-If a team has a severe advantage(100 pts or whatever), don’t let anyone join that team first…for instance, lets say the score is 300-200 and both teams have 3 people, someone can join the losing team, but not the winning team such that it would be 4 vs 3.
These aren’t finalized and can be tweaked but I think some thought needs to go into it from Anet
This is a problem. I think the easiest way might be to prevent people from joining the winning team even if the numbers are in their favor. This will at least get some games to even out a little.
Right now:
1. Initial fight happens.
2. People on the losing side leave.
3. Autobalance kicks in.
4. “Spectators” join the winning side right away.
I agree
If you remove rewards farmers will move into unranked/ranked for dailies and whatnot. This is a terrible situation that is luckily avoided by hotjoins having rewards.
Matchmaking is pretty broken but it’s still much better than the lack of matchmaking present in hotjoins. This, combined with the randomness of everything that occurs there, makes matches blowouts with the very rare comeback.
=> Ppl can actually practice in practice mode when incentive to faceroll is removed
The biggest incentive still remains: winning. And most players want to win so badly they don’t care about sportmanship.
I have to disagree, feel like the main incentive to faceroll 5v3-4 is about the easy rewards. If you take the rewards away, satisfaction about winning would come from winning on equal terms or your individual good performance, let’s say winning all your 1v1 fights or ressing your downed teammate and turning the teamfight around for example.
=> Dueling/sparring etiquette makes games less hostile, players can talk to each other
This is a dangerous way of thinking. I’d say that players who want to duel should simply go to 1v1 servers. Rotating correctly include how to +1 the opponent, so by nature practice should not respect duelling conventions. People whining about “1v2” or “1v3” simply demonstrate their inability to read the flow of the game.
I’d argue hotjoins don’t teach much about the rotations since it’s so rarely 5v5. You won’t see any results of your good rotation if you’re a player short since you won’t be able to +1 anyone. On the other side you’ll be fighting at least +1 basically all the time so rotations won’t be even needed.
Also, the few dueling servers have clear rules and at least the most popular one allows only 2 players on the map AND it’s basically experienced players only. If you try to practice/duel on a hotjoin server ppl are going to join and cap points and try to kill you without even thinking.
Friendly noob experience
That could indeed be the case. Still, there are lots of players that join practice just to crush the occasional beginner, or simply to avoid uncomfortable situations in ranked games, where your “real” level can be more easily decrypted.
I guess it’s true there are players like this, I don’t see it as a bad thing though… it’s good to fight against more skilled opponents to train, and if the rewards would be removed, the more experienced player could actually help the newbie by practicing together instead of only focusing on getting 500 points.
If you remove rewards farmers will move into unranked/ranked for dailies and whatnot. This is a terrible situation that is luckily avoided by hotjoins having rewards.
Isn’t this a good thing? Farmers would have to actually play the game to get the rewards, they’d have to try their best to win in a fair situation.
Boosting the player pool for matchmaking could improve the games for everyone. The 0 experience players who atm sometimes show up in high MMR games could actually be matched with other 0 experience players?
Hi,
I have to disagree, feel like the main incentive to faceroll 5v3-4 is about the easy rewards. If you take the rewards away, satisfaction about winning would come from winning on equal terms or your individual good performance, let’s say winning all your 1v1 fights or ressing your downed teammate and turning the teamfight around for example.
Well, let’s hope so, it’s a refreshing opinion!
Rewards are actually limited in hotjoin; after the track has advanced a bit you don’t get anything for the day. Since I don’t care a bit about rewards, I keep playing hotjoin even after the track has been exhausted, and see players doing the same – yet the game quality does not change much. Hence my doubts about the correlation of rewards and players’ behaviors (there’s one for sure, but in my experience it’s not as strong as you outline it).
I’d argue hotjoins don’t teach much about the rotations since it’s so rarely 5v5. You won’t see any results of your good rotation if you’re a player short since you won’t be able to +1 anyone. On the other side you’ll be fighting at least +1 basically all the time so rotations won’t be even needed.
I’m not sure I agree here. Here’s how I see Conquest: your have a pool of resources (5 players or less) and a pool of usages (nodes to control, secondary objectives). Rotations express ways to allocate resources to usages, in the most profitable way.
Even on 4v5, there are interesting allocations to be made – for instance if you expect a zerg of 3 players on a node, so only two other players elsewhere, then it means it’s possible to +1 one of them. Most of the time, you won’t out-rotate your opponents to the point of winning; but there are still many ways to have fun and play strong.
Also, the few dueling servers have clear rules and at least the most popular one allows only 2 players on the map AND it’s basically experienced players only. If you try to practice/duel on a hotjoin server ppl are going to join and cap points and try to kill you without even thinking.
That is true indeed, yet it’s never really been much of a problem to me. Before new players join, you often have time to make a few duels, and then you can simply switch arenas. Besides, I’ve found that many people did understand that there were duels going on, and would leave the arena accordingly. Your mileage may vary, though.
Regards.
They need to do something about switching teams in hot joins. Its insane…the first 30 seconds of a match often determine the out come and its usually because the start of the match is unbalanced and then whenever it comes into balance someone joins the winning team. Doesn’t Anet see whats wrong with this?