Guild Wars 2

No one likes to lose. And with the recent changes to hot-join (now “practice mode”), no one has to.

When the teams are unbalanced, a prompt lets everyone know that “<color> team is too big!”, and volunteering to join the smaller team guarantees you a win. And yes, I did say everyone. As in, not only people in the bigger team, but people in spectate, and even in the smaller team as well.

So, here’s what happens: At the beginning of every match, people join teams, then immediately go back in spectate to make the teams unbalanced. This triggers auto-balance right off the bat, which allows everyone in the match to have an assured victory bonus. And since players already know they will win regardless of the outcome, very few actually play the game (since running into a wall for 10 minutes will make absolutely no difference whatsoever).

So, how do we fix this? The solution I’m bringing to the table is to quantify every action in PvP: dealing damage / finishing off enemies, healing / reviving / granting buffs to allies, capturing map objectives, etc. Everything that proves you’ve actually been playing could give score points, and your reward could be based entirely on your own performance (up to maybe a maximum of 500 rank points), and ignoring the match outcome (to keep in theme with “practice”).

I’d love to see practice have an actual purpose, and it would make sense to reintroduce personal score as a variable in the equation without discouraging certain play styles (such as bunker), instead of assuming everyone constantly has either 0 or 120 points (like it currently does).

PvP really isn’t that great for PvE rewards… I don’t really see what the big deal is. Sure, it’s not fun for those who want to play, but it’s not gamebreaking. Also, Unranked/Ranked is either the same or more rank points. Other people getting rank points doesn’t really hurt you much.

It’s not a good thing, but there might be bigger issues to address.

Are you SURE that it actually affects the final reward? You get the 25 Autobalance bonus for clicking the button, but I’m pretty sure the final rewards are only awarded if you actually get MOVED to the losing team.

And in any case, even if it was giving out the rewards, I don’t really see it as a big deal. Hotjoin rewards are capped at 2 tiers per day anyway, and Rank was never a true indicator of skill; even a hopeless player running the worst builds imaginable with a “0 wins|infinity losses” record could eventually get to Dragon rank if they kept at it long enough.

Zaxares.5419:

Are you SURE that it actually affects the final reward? You get the 25 Autobalance bonus for clicking the button, but I’m pretty sure the final rewards are only awarded if you actually get MOVED to the losing team.

I am certain. If I’m in the smaller team and I volounteer to join my own team, nothing happens and I get the victory bonus (plus the volunteer bonus) at the end of the match.

And the issue isn’t the rewards themselves. It’s the fact that a lot of players play for rewards, rather than for fun. These players take it upon themselves to make the game as miserable for others as they are technically allowed to, if it means more items for them.

My idea isn’t to increase or normalize rewards, but to reward those who bring something to their team. It used to be that the only PvP rewards were cosmetics, and back then, matches were a lot more enjoyable. People played for fun.

Nowadays, all rewards are PvE loot, so more often than not, matches are filled with PvE players who just want to get some extra items without having to put in the tremendous effort of actually playing the game. This just shouldn’t happen, much less be encouraged.