Guild Wars 2

From my personal experience, the claim that people going offline causes 5vs4 matches is just wrong. So many times I have seen 5vs5 with one or more people leaving during the fight because it wasn’t going their way. Although there is no category for it I have always reported these people. That’s how I remember it being done in GW1 as well – until the penatly patch for leaving came (which took quite a long time if I remember correctly). Where is such a thing?
I’m honestly wondering how a game developer can think that creating solo join “high” rewarding (“everybody wants the orr armor!”) without any payment AND no penalty for leaving is a good idea. I’m having a really hard time believing somebody would implement such a thing into a game – yet there it is, ruining so many people’s gaming experience.
I’m fairly new to pvp in GW2 because I wanted to enjoy all of the pve content (which I did so far) before delving as deep into pvp as I did back in GW1. But in the last two weeks I have learned the hard way that this isn’t GW1 pvp, it’s flawed in so many ways.
Creating a penalty for people leaving tournament games would be a start. Or at least introduce Guild vs. Guild where only “premade” and more stable teams can fight each other. So far the new rated play is more a “premade teams farming 3-4 randoms”, not competitive in any way!

what about afk-ers? For the first time today i was actually one of them, I alt-tabbed out of the game whilst waiting and my pc froze so i couldn’t open the game window back up – to the detriment of my guild’s team lol.

I can understand that people solo queing don’t want to join a (probably losing) game in progress, but how about if people above rank 30 pressing “play now” in hotjoins got ported in if someone is afk for more than 30 seconds??

Happened to me many times too…we only go premade and we had everyone up ready, submitted rooster with everyone accepted and then we went in and found out that someone didn’t get the go now window and we were 4+1 pug with our fifth mate in hom…all of this on ts so i know they were not afk or something, they just didn’t get the go now window, we could still chat in party and when we went out he was still in party with us like nothing happened…wtf?

For the “high rewarding” thing judas said above…well orrian is no more an high reward, after all those 1vs1 loser’s paid chests farming pretty much everyone (From the best ones to the worst) wear orrian…offtopic but sad btw…once upon a time if you spotted someone wearing orrian you were sure he was probably good, now he’s just another one who farmed paid chests..

How about …
Menu – Logoff – Character select … leaves you in roster
Menu – Logoff – Logoff … removes you from roster
Menu – Exit (or alf f4) … removes you from roster

Game crash or network DC gives 2min leeway then good bye sir. (unless the match is underway)
Edit: a vote to kick system (“TGSlasher has DCed would you like to remove from party and party with another?”) – that way if its a premade group he will stay. BUT if its a pubby play then why should I want to keep that player that will make it 4 v 5?
Also
You should have bonuses displayed to members
So if I’m in a public team and we are vs a Premade (pretty obvious which teams are premade) then you should have an onscreen 10% (or other number) glory bonus.

Or a reward at the end of the match even if you lose (only when vs a team with a certain lvl higher MMR or a pub vs premade team or a combination of the two that I like to call hold)

Evan Lesh.3295:

First, we need to solve the problem of people leaving before the game begins, its simply a flaw in our roster design. Then we need to determine a suitable punishment for people who leave during a match, and do not return.

On top of these, it sounds like some people are describing a bug forcing 4v5’s. We do not know what would be causing this or whether it is a new problem or not. It’s hard to tell when there are multiple ways a team could be missing members.

To clarify, bugs take higher priority over features like custom arenas. However a punishment system is a feature that takes considerable more time, and must be weighed against our current features plans. We always have the option to re-prioritize just like we did with matchmaking.

Just my two cents…
Now that matchmaking is active and all tournaments are free, I would imagine they are taking up a much larger percentage of your PvP traffic. If people are experiencing an 80% rate of uneven matches, which completely destroys the entire PvP match experience.

It must take the highest priority and all avenues to address it must take the highest priority.

I know its a kitten if-you-do, kitten it-you-don’t scenario when it comes to not releasing new features, versus correctly supporting the ones you have been able to squeak out (which let’s be honest, has been embarrassingly little, how can it take any real coding to have stood up 1-round tournaments from 3-round tournaments, but you didn’t even take the time to set the rewards correctly for the longest time)

If you can’t correctly support the limited features that are currently available with your resources, get together in a big Anet meeting and either allocate more resources, or hire more resources.

Evan Lesh.3295:

aaron.7850:

reading areanent’s replies here is disheartening.. its like they walk one step foward and two steps backwards

It just makes our next step that much bigger :P. Honestly, its great to really get to the exact root of problems in a constructive way so we don’t implement features that only half solve the issue.

50% of my games are 5v4 as solo queuer and you wonder why pvp in this game is a joke lol, but hai gaiz letz make custom servers a priority for the 3 elite teams that still play this kittenty game.

Sprawl.3891:

Evan Lesh.3295:

aaron.7850:

reading areanent’s replies here is disheartening.. its like they walk one step foward and two steps backwards

It just makes our next step that much bigger :P. Honestly, its great to really get to the exact root of problems in a constructive way so we don’t implement features that only half solve the issue.

50% of my games are 5v4 as solo queuer and you wonder why pvp in this game is a joke lol, but hai gaiz letz make custom servers a priority for the 3 elite teams that still play this kittenty game.

50% seems a bit high, unless you’re playing at like 7:30 in the morning. I haven’t seen nearly as many 4v5s in 2-team solo join, compared to the old frees, which really were almost 50% 4v5.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Sprawl.3891:

Evan Lesh.3295:

aaron.7850:

reading areanent’s replies here is disheartening.. its like they walk one step foward and two steps backwards

It just makes our next step that much bigger :P. Honestly, its great to really get to the exact root of problems in a constructive way so we don’t implement features that only half solve the issue.

50% of my games are 5v4 as solo queuer and you wonder why pvp in this game is a joke lol, but hai gaiz letz make custom servers a priority for the 3 elite teams that still play this kittenty game.

50% seems a bit high, unless you’re playing at like 7:30 in the morning. I haven’t seen nearly as many 4v5s in 2-team solo join, compared to the old frees, which really were almost 50% 4v5.

played 4 games during primetime, 2 were 4v5, not even gonna bother playing anymore until it’s fixed, cya.

Sprawl.3891:

played 4 games during primetime, 2 were 4v5, not even gonna bother playing anymore until it’s fixed, cya.

Careful man “I quit” posts aren’t allowed. Anet doesn’t actually care about feedback from disappointed players even if it comes with progressive suggestions. they only care if you’re sucking up, to which they will give the same rhetoric about being low staffed/too busy and how they don’t want “half-fixes” or “unfinished products” just to keep suspense up.
Which really only means their last Idea didn’t work so they’re scrapping it entirely for something else, just like what happened to the wall of champions, paid tournaments, and a ranking system that doesn’t punish leavers/AFK’ers thus making the ranking system meaningless.

You know what every game that has become an Esport has in common? they punish leavers/AFK’ers to protect the integrity of their ranking systems.

Hey Evan, I experienced a bug with the roster where I was kicked just as the match popped, I’ve submitted an in-game report to ArenaNet with full details. I’m posting it here for visibility and to see if anyone else has experienced it. I wonder if this is what’s causing so many 4v5s.

This is what my bug report said:

I queued for a single-round tournament with two friends and just when the match ‘popped’ I was taken off the roster, preventing me from joining the match. I saw the PvP icon at the top of my screen change from the ‘in roster’ icon to the default icon.

I asked the roster leader if he checked that I was on the roster and he confirmed there was a green tick next to my name when he clicked submit.

1. I didn’t log out or change characters at any point while on the roster.
2. I accepted the roster invite while I was in hot join.
3. When I loaded into the heart of the mists I accepted a party invite from the roster leader.
4. A few moments later the tournament match popped and my friend told me who we were fighting, that’s when I noticed I wasn’t on the roster.

Screenshot for evidence:

Cunning.7946:

Hey Evan, I experienced a bug with the roster where I was kicked just as the match popped, I’ve submitted an in-game report to ArenaNet with full details. I’m posting it here for visibility and to see if anyone else has experienced it. I wonder if this is what’s causing so many 4v5s.

This is what my bug report said:

I queued for a single-round tournament with two friends and just when the match ‘popped’ I was taken off the roster, preventing me from joining the match. I saw the PvP icon at the top of my screen change from the ‘in roster’ icon to the default icon.

I asked the roster leader if he checked that I was on the roster and he confirmed there was a green tick next to my name when he clicked submit.

1. I didn’t log out or change characters at any point while on the roster.
2. I accepted the roster invite while I was in hot join.
3. When I loaded into the heart of the mists I accepted a party invite from the roster leader.
4. A few moments later the tournament match popped and my friend told me who we were fighting, that’s when I noticed I wasn’t on the roster.

Screenshot for evidence:

maybe the leader of the roster have kicked you from the roster and resubmitted the roster

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

maybe the leader of the roster have kicked you from the roster and resubmitted the roster

It’s possible, but unlikely. There wasn’t enough time between me being kicked from the roster to the leader loading into the match. Maybe he was trolling me and got an instant pop, but considering how common 4v5s are at the moment I think it’s more likely to be a problem with the roster system.

Cunning.7946:

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

maybe the leader of the roster have kicked you from the roster and resubmitted the roster

It’s possible, but unlikely. There wasn’t enough time between me being kicked from the roster to the leader loading into the match. Maybe he was trolling me and got an instant pop, but considering how common 4v5s are at the moment I think it’s more likely to be a problem with the roster system.

It was exactly as Cunning said it was, as per the screenie. I was the roster leader, invited him, submitted then the match popped. We were down 5v4.

If I was trolling him, and didn’t invite him, then he wouldn’t have been on the roster. Then the game would have put a different solo player in there.

I just remembered this isn’t the first time I’ve been automatically kicked from a roster while solo/trio queuing. A few months ago I was watching Qt Vain’s twitch stream and I noticed he was solo queuing in frees, so I also solo queued at the same time to try and get on the same roster.

I managed to get onto his roster twice in a row, but each time for no apparent reason, the roster disbanded itself before the match popped. On the third attempt we ended up on separate rosters and were both able to enter our separate matches. I was talking to him on his stream and he was also confused by it.

I think it may be related to my latest experience.

maybe you are just cursed?

While I’m sure some people dc due to their connection dropping, I don’t think it’s such a widespread problem as the number of dropouts would suggest! If a match starts with 4v5 that means that fully 10% of the playerbase can’t stay connected for 20’ – and I KNOW this isn’t the case! I’m sure your network logs will bear this out!

The real cause for the amount of dropouts is the length of the queue. It’s unreasonable to ask people to hang around in the Mists (where there’s nothing else to do) for 5-10’ waiting for a match to start. They get bored, and they decide to do drop-in instead, or go do pve.

The reason for the queue taking so long, of course, is that the playerbase is fragmented between drop-in (8v8), 1-round tournaments, and 3-round tournaments, so it takes ages to complete a roster, and even longer to complete 8 rosters as required by 3-team tournaments. There are three easy solutions to this problem:

1. allow people to queue up for a match from anywhere (pve, wvw, etc), by integrating the interface of the tournament NPC into the PvP window. That way they can keep mucking about in pve while waiting, which will result in less people quitting in frustration, and you’d get teleported there as when you queue up for wvw. Additionally, as an added safety you should decrease the window of time for people to accept to join a match from 2’ to 1’. That would give the matchmaking system 1’ slack to replace any dropouts.

2. scrap one of the two tournament types! I don’t see why we need both 1-round and 3-round tournaments! They’re cannibalising each other’s players! The queues for 3-round tournaments in particular are INSANE, so my first instinct would be to scrap those. Plus, having to play 3 rounds of matches with the same team is even more frustrating if someone drops right before the first match. But whatever, even if you ban 1-round tournaments instead it’ll immeasurably improve 3-round.

Back before the game was released when everyone was complaining about Conquest being the only gametype, the design team’s reply was that they didn’t want to repeat the GW1 situation, where the pvp playerbase was split between TA, RA, Codex (briefly), Tombs/HA, and GvG, with none of them having enough people, so they were forcing everyone in GW2 to play the same thing. So, having forced this unpopular gametype on all of us, why go and split it up between 8v8 drop-in/drop-out, 1-round free tournaments, and 3-round free tournaments? It’s still fragmentation if you join a different queue, even if it’s for the same match type!

Before the recent patch came into effect, people were complaining about the length of the queues in paid tournaments and asking that free tournaments be banned to amalgamate the playerbase. So, having gotten rid of one of the two tournament types, why go and split the remaining type into two? That doesn’t solve the problem! You have your casual gametype (drop-in, where people can disconnect with no consequences for their teammates cause someone else will take their place or the game will rebalance), and tournament – why have two of the latter?

And as one of those people who are bored to death of Conquest and are asking for the return of GvG, I really have to raise my hands up in utter disbelief at a game that has THREE different pvp gametypes and ALL OF THEM are Conquest! If you’re happy with fragmenting the playerbase at least make one game mode something else! Allow those of us old-timers who want to pretend it’s still 2005 a tiny little ghetto GvG gametype, and keep everyone else in the same queue so it’ll move them into matches faster!

This sort of scenario isnt even rare sadly….

Or this one……….our 4th player left halfway through.

I made a similar thread stating the specific time and pictures of people leaving or afk in tournaments,however i get infracted for the thread.All i did was substantiated facts with pictures as u did Lordrosicky but the moderator sees that as namecalling aswell as accusing other users of inappropriate ingame actions. That was the words they give to me.

“Your post in Official way of handling Tournament No-shows was infracted by a moderator:
Can we have a sticky thread regarding the official way to deal with people who submit their names for tournament but log out or afk in tournaments? Since it might be an underhanded method of griefing or giving an advantage to friends. E.G I’m going to sleep/eat/shower/afk,i’ll submit my name for tournament and make sure my friends are not in roster.I hope my friends get lucky and versus my roster for easy win
Moderator Note:
As your thread makes heavy use of namecalling, aswell as accusing other users of inappropriate ingame actions we decided to delete your thread, feel free to open a thread without accusing anyone and calling out their names about the same issue.
Thanks for your understanding.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Or this one……….our 4th player left halfway through.

you’re “lucky”, today FOUR of my team mates left after 1 minute of game -.- I was left 1vs5, and it wasn’t even a premade against us… -.-;

I honestly wonder if alot of these players are ‘hotjoin’ players. In hotjoin people come and go as they please, a bad habit for people once they start to try and do tournies.

I just want to thank you Evan Lesh for taking some time to show us that you are looking into this problem…It can be very frustrating whenever there is a problem yet no feedback from the developers over some time. I hope this problem gets resolved as soon as possible!

why not give the players an actual “replacement” option?

See, let’s say you’ve got a System, that checks if both teams are 5 players strong towards the beginning of the match. If the check is negative, you let the players do a quick vote like : One of your teammates seems to have disconnected. Do you want a replacement? Vote Yes/No

If “Yes” is choosen by 2 out of 4 members, you just invite somebody who has signed up for solo que, maybe giving him a notification that he has been chosen as a “substitute player”.

So this would get rid of a lot of these pesky 4v5 Situations, while also allowing premade teams to keep their dc’d teammates in the team.

JudasCarnage.2850:

But in the last two weeks I have learned the hard way that this isn’t GW1 pvp, it’s flawed in so many ways.

Amen brother, GW1 pvp felt slick and polished, like it was designed by people raised on Quakeworld and the whole online arena ethos. GW2 feels like it was designed by MMO and MOBA players.

i played 3 matches yesterday… all of them 4v5 (except one where it was 5v5 but 1 was afk)

I did not read all the comments so sorry if this have been said.

You could make it so that you get something for second place? It should not be much but enough to keep players in the game and not leave.

Also, place a timer on when you can queue a new match.
For example 5-8minutes between matches? (the time for a normal match).
This way players cant benefit from leaving one match to try out for the next one.

Then maybe it would get rid off some leavers that do it on purpose.

i hate that i have to keep using league of legends as a comparison.

But they have put in two great systems for this.

First.

Before a match starts it asks each player to click that they are ready (you have about 10 seconds to respond). If not it throws them back into the shuffle till it can find another. If you had to get up and afk or walk out of the room or got distracted, your team would not be punished for this. you would simply have to reque when you are able to come back from what you were doing and play the game.

Second.

Leaver buster. Seeing as people who abuse the system by dodging matches they dont want to play often do it a LOT. The system tracks when they leave and picks up if they’ve been doing it an abornomal amount of times in great succession. For example, if you leave a game 20% of the time after its started. GOOD CHANCE you need your ability to que removed.

actually they already have half of the system in place,they just need to refine it.

when the tournament room is ready we are getting the pop up appear so we can go now or auto warp in 2 minutes.Just remove that auto warp feature, and replace “Go now” with “I’m ready”.in 1 minute,who ever didn’t click I’m ready,will be auto-removed from roster. All those who clicked “I’m ready” will be notified that the roster is not full and it is auto-resubmitted.The empty slots is refilled with those in queue and the pop up is again made available to all participants in each roster again. This will pretty much ensure that a full active party starts the tournament each time. It won’t solve genuine DC or AFK problems but at least it solves the. problem with manual re-submission of roster and starting without full participants.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This is a very real problem, but we can only work on so many things at once. I would still place it at a lower priority than Custom Arenas.

This isnt lower priority than custom arenas.

This issue is making people hate and avoid playing tournies.

For me, since there is no other option to get the title for my main character, I will only play tournies until I hit that 150 wins and then cease to play tournies forever because of this major unbalance.

4 vs 5 is a guaranteed loss. Its no fun at all knowing right at the start you are going to loose no matter what you do.

You need to ask yourself and the team what is the use of a new map if this problem persists.
When custom arenas come sure you’ll get a spike in spvp for a week or so, but then it will stop because of issues like these that make the game unenjoyable even before the gate is even open.

Fix this problem first and have a higher and more happy player base going into the opening of your custom arena and a higher player base for the months to come.

Until solo queue and premades are separated there is no reason to play anymore.

It isn’t fun on either side when the game isn’t close, and the relatively toxic community which exists in most MMOs where a full premade thinks they are pro for beating a total pug.