Guild Wars 2

I agree. It doesn’t do anything positive in hotjoin but promote stacking teams. If there is an uneven number of players, the extra should automatically go to the losing team, I think. Could keep games even and prevent people from jumping teams which is really just sad to me.

Spectator mode is not why this happens, its the fact you can check rank while in spectator.

Also its hot-join, if you don’t wanna deal with people dropping in/out and spectating, go play ranked.

How do you check rank (I’m assuming of the other players) in Spectator mode?

@Aomine

Is this a fact or only your opinion of HJ and the players?

How do you check that the most players in HJ are “noobs”, who sit at the spectate mode?
How do you know, that all these people waiting until they can join the “winner team”?

PS: Your suggestion making the same, what you critizise.
This would give them the possibility to wait until they can joined the winner team.

I think it should stay. I like to sometimes see exactly how player X just so totally wiped me. However I would also accept once I enter spectate mode, I can’t exit it until end of match.

I’m in agreement that Spectate mode should be removed in hotjoins that are regular servers.

However I would find it okay in custom arena’s bought by people.

Due to the spectate mode it has made hotjoin corrupted, people just wait to join the winning team, the losing team is most of the time down 1 player and those people waiting/spectating know better than to join a losing team.

Back when hotjoins were around a year ago, they weren’t as corrupted, sure people could switch teams, but teams were most of the time even and if a team was winning, you couldn’t switch to it unless someone dropped out of the game on that winning team because they were mostly even.

Now its not even fun, and the way these developers do nothing and think everything is “okay” just makes me furious.

Black Teagan.9215:

@Aomine

Is this a fact or only your opinion of HJ and the players?

How do you check that the most players in HJ are “noobs”, who sit at the spectate mode?
How do you know, that all these people waiting until they can join the “winner team”?

PS: Your suggestion making the same, what you critizise.
This would give them the possibility to wait until they can joined the winner team.

You never PVP do you?

It’s fact and people who pvp alot knows it.
Lots of time there’d be as high as 6 people watching unfair 3 v 2 / 4 v 3 going on for several minutes and not joining.
Even if they do join, it is for the purpose of forcing auto-balance so they can join the winning team after auto-balance.

As to my suggestion, it shows that you’re completely clueless about what I am talking about whatsoever.
Solo Q and Team Q do NOT have auto-balance, and you CANNOT join half-way.
That’s why adding spectate in those 2 modes has no problem whatsoever.

Spectator mode is a good thing – sometimes there are great players and its good to watch them the following match to learn something – even in hotjoin.

The real problem is allowing players to switch teams:
- you should not be able to go into spectator mode once the match has begun – either spectate from the start or play from the start. Spectator mode and swap team should be locked once the match starts.
- players joining after start should be forced to the losing team or team with fewest numbers.

how it should be:
game starts, players get put on (mostly)random teams,
perhaps it could use ranks and try to balance them as best it can.

if a player joins while teams are even and score are the same, player gets put on random team.
if a player joins while teams are uneven, player gets put on less populated team.
if a player joins while teams are even but scores aren’t, player gets put on losing team.

players can still choose to change to a spectator, but doing so will make it so you cannot join the same game until it ends, even if you leave and rejoin.

the current problem is the one outlined by the OP, whan a team starts winning people will wait in spectator mode to join the winning team, and while this is happening people are leaving the losing team, in severe cases you can have the match ending in a 1v5 because noone else is joining the losing team.

also to the people saying “just do tournaments!” you need to understand, many of us can’t stand meta, imho thats the main function of hotjoin, its the mode where you can get away from most of the meta clones and play with none meta builds yourself, would you really want to play tournaments as a p/p thief? or a greatsword glasszerker warrior? you’d get cursed by your team and facerolled by the meta clones of the other team, sure we still have some meta clones in hotjoin, but there are alot less of them so you get to play the more enjoyable builds and face different ones!

^Yeah, I like that solution as well.

Spectator mode is staying. As for people sitting in it during a match, idk it’s weird. This didn’t happen much before the pvp reward change did it? That would mean pve players trying to get rewards are just being lazy. The old hotjoin had no PvE rewards so people would just join a match and pick a side then try to farm for points…which was probably even worse than new players trying to stack a winning team.

Liewec.2896:

how it should be:
game starts, players get put on (mostly)random teams,
perhaps it could use ranks and try to balance them as best it can.

if a player joins while teams are even and score are the same, player gets put on random team.
if a player joins while teams are uneven, player gets put on less populated team.
if a player joins while teams are even but scores aren’t, player gets put on losing team.

players can still choose to change to a spectator, but doing so will make it so you cannot join the same game until it ends, even if you leave and rejoin.

the current problem is the one outlined by the OP, whan a team starts winning people will wait in spectator mode to join the winning team, and while this is happening people are leaving the losing team, in severe cases you can have the match ending in a 1v5 because noone else is joining the losing team.

also to the people saying “just do tournaments!” you need to understand, many of us can’t stand meta, imho thats the main function of hotjoin, its the mode where you can get away from most of the meta clones and play with none meta builds yourself, would you really want to play tournaments as a p/p thief? or a greatsword glasszerker warrior? you’d get cursed by your team and facerolled by the meta clones of the other team, sure we still have some meta clones in hotjoin, but there are alot less of them so you get to play the more enjoyable builds and face different ones!

The problem with that is that it will encourage meta builds in Hotjoin.

The only way to win is to use a meta build.

Liewec.2896

players can still choose to change to a spectator, but doing so will make it so you cannot join the same game until it ends, even if you leave and rejoin.

Hotjoins should be fluid, allowing players to come and go as they please. Maybe someone just destroyed you and you want to see their build/playstyle to learn, then hop back into the game to try out your new strategy. Maybe I just got stuck in the map and need to reset my position in a very fun game. Etc. This is not a good solution.

runeblade.7514

The only way to win is to use a meta build.

No.

As for everyone else, I do not understand why you care about winning or losing so much in hotjoins. They are meant to be casual games where you can play with your friends. Outnumbered? Take it as an opportunity to get better and stop whining about what is or isn’t fair. I hardly ever even look at the score or teams when I join a game, and my team still comes out on top for the majority of games.

bethekey.8314:

As for everyone else, I do not understand why you care about winning or losing so much in hotjoins. They are meant to be casual games where you can play with your friends. Outnumbered? Take it as an opportunity to get better and stop whining about what is or isn’t fair. I hardly ever even look at the score or teams when I join a game, and my team still comes out on top for the majority of games.

I’m curious when the last time you played a hotjoin match? A solid half of my hotjoin games are completely plagued by the behavior that inspired this post and are the complete opposite of what you’re saying hotjoin is about. It isn’t carefree getting used to pvp gameplay, it’s people hunting for winning teams at an unacceptable rate. It makes it very un-fun to try to just join and play an honest game like it should be.

If you really support the ideas you seem to, you should support this thread, not criticize it.

runeblade.7514:

The problem with that is that it will encourage meta builds in Hotjoin.
The only way to win is to use a meta build.

not really, i never play meta builds but can still win when there are some (not all) meta builds, i dont see how better balanced teams will change that!

bethekey.8314:

Hotjoins should be fluid, allowing players to come and go as they please. Maybe someone just destroyed you and you want to see their build/playstyle to learn, then hop back into the game to try out your new strategy. Maybe I just got stuck in the map and need to reset my position in a very fun game.

when was the last time you got stuck in the map and had to leave?!
and if people are so desperate to view someones build then they can, but they’ll have to join another server after that,
or we could even let them rejoin, but only on the team they were previously on,
maybe give them a 20 second window before bringing in a replacement player.

there are plenty of ways we could better balance it, the big question is why is such an abusable system still in the game? and why has nothing been done to better balance the matches?
they were far more balanced before team select and spectator.

Short answer : Remove it plz

Remove it …
and in the future where your team8s will start leaving , cause the enemy is 100 points ahead implant a 30-1hour disshonor mechanic too …
then when we we have the disshonor , they should remove the gold cap in hotjoins …

without a gold limit/reward cap , i want to see if the hotjoins or solo arena will survive more …
and if hotjoin will be the winner , then we can have 8v8 and focus on creating maps that are used for a large amount of ppl :P

Roe.3679

I’m curious when the last time you played a hotjoin match? A solid half of my hotjoin games are completely plagued by the behavior that inspired this post and are the complete opposite of what you’re saying hotjoin is about. It isn’t carefree getting used to pvp gameplay, it’s people hunting for winning teams at an unacceptable rate. It makes it very un-fun to try to just join and play an honest game like it should be.

I mess around in hotjoins regularly. Just yesterday I had a match go to 350-0 following my solo kill of the enemy team’s lord. Someone left the opposing team as a result, and I was transferred. I proceeded to not whine on the forums, play well, kill the other lord solo and win the game.

I know that the spectate-autobalance-rejoin behavior exists. The point is that it does not ruin hotjoin games as many of these people are claiming. If you want an honest game, play ranked. Hotjoins will never be fair by their nature, and they are not meant to be. I can swap all of my skills mid-match if I want to, just to completely counter someone or gain ridiculous mobility. If you want fair, why not bring that up too?

If you refuse to do ranked, then learn to deal with the consequences of a non-competitive, purposefully unrestricted game mode. Play around your lack of a teammate by rotating around the inevitable zerg. Learn to 1v2/3/4/5 the sometimes hilariously awful opponents you’ll meet. Etc.

Roe.3679

If you really support the ideas you seem to, you should support this thread, not criticize it.

If I really supported my ideas, I would say exactly what I have said. I understand the differences between ranked, structured games and hotjoins, and I accept the necessary consequences and benefits of each. Do you?

Removing spectator mode does not even address the root of the problem; it is only the means people are using to reap the rewards of a win. Instead, remove the reward for a win if a player changes teams manually during a match (not do to autobalance).

What you said is true, no doubt people abuse that system but spectating games did help me a out a little bit, especially watching the rank 80’s play, I copy people’s style at first and then develop my own. Spectating isn’t all necesarilly bad, not everyone is naturally good at pvp, some of us need to watch.

Agreed, remove spectate mode in hotjoin and allow it in rank play only where it cannot be used any other way than what was intended to begin with: Watch other’s play and learn.

Case closed.

Keep spectate mode but make it so if you spectate you cant enter the match.

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

Not that I am basing anything I am about to post on hundreds of hotjoin games and hard stats, but my subjective experience has shown me that it’s a lot of different ways that it happens.

I’ve seen people leave the losing team to join the winning team mid-match (which seems risky as far as getting back in but I have seen it regardless), and I’ve seen people wait and see which team gets a lead before joining, which is probably the most common despite the rewards loss. It can be pretty frustrating losing a 3v4, finally get that 4th guy to even it out, and the other team immediately has a 5th. That’s at least as common, if not moreso, as an even and enjoyable match in hotjoin. In my experience.

Edit: Also, I’m not sure that people care as much about the lessened rewards more than they just don’t want to join the losing team, if that makes sense.

Cuz people find winning more enjoyable than losing

Hotjoin would be more balance without the ability to pick your team. There was a time when the game bugged and wasn’t allowing people to choose their team. Was nice. Very few one sided matches. If friends want to be on the same team, they can join a custom server.

bethekey.8314:

I mess around in hotjoins regularly. Just yesterday I had a match go to 350-0 following my solo kill of the enemy team’s lord. Someone left the opposing team as a result, and I was transferred. I proceeded to not whine on the forums, play well, kill the other lord solo and win the game.

I’m not sure this is making the point you want to make. Is it ok that you were winning 200-0 or 350-0? The behavior being discussed in this thread was almost surely taking place in that game. That is PVE magnitude farming more than PvP.

Plus, why would you whine? You got the win and you can AFK your way to faster rewards.

Also, an urge for Hotjoin to not be a complete mess isn’t whining. I want new players to learn and move on to ranked matches, not get farmed and never come back.

bethekey.8314:

I know that the spectate-autobalance-rejoin behavior exists. The point is that it does not ruin hotjoin games as many of these people are claiming. If you want an honest game, play ranked. Hotjoins will never be fair by their nature, and they are not meant to be. I can swap all of my skills mid-match if I want to, just to completely counter someone or gain ridiculous mobility. If you want fair, why not bring that up too?

If you refuse to do ranked, then learn to deal with the consequences of a non-competitive, purposefully unrestricted game mode. Play around your lack of a teammate by rotating around the inevitable zerg. Learn to 1v2/3/4/5 the sometimes hilariously awful opponents you’ll meet. Etc.

It’s asking for fairness in numbers and not setting everything up to fail at every possible match if you get even 1 or 2 people that practice this behavior. I see you don’t mind that hotjoin is practically anything goes, but I view that as WvW more than structured (key word here) PvP.

bethekey.8314:

Removing spectator mode does not even address the root of the problem; it is only the means people are using to reap the rewards of a win. Instead, remove the reward for a win if a player changes teams manually during a match (not do to autobalance).

Removing spectator mode removes the entire possibility that it even happens, it is the definition of the root cause.

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

It’s happened at all points in a game from start to near finish. Usually games would start off already uneven as a 2v3 etc. and then the scores would obviously tip into the 3 player teams favor, more often than not. People joining would see this and either wait for someone else to join the losing team so they themselves could go on the winning team or wait till someone from the losing team spectated to wait for an autobalance. From that point there isn’t a choice because it’s random who gets picked, unless someone volunteers, and then the same thing would happen again causing a circle of spectate, auto-balance, rejoin because people want to be on the winning team for a reward. Some players do understand that they’ll get rewards for volunteering or getting auto’d if they didn’t choose the option not to. Still that doesn’t help as many people who don’t know about that keep continuing the cycle explained above and in some cases people abuse the spectate system just to troll people who are winning/losing.

I don’t want to get too off topic here correcting every misinterpretation you seem to come up with (esp. since it has received Anet attention), so I’ll only do it once.

Roe.3679

I’m not sure this is making the point you want to make. Is it ok that you were winning 200-0 or 350-0? The behavior being discussed in this thread was almost surely taking place in that game. That is PVE magnitude farming more than PvP.

No duh the behavior was taking place in that game. That is why I mentioned it and why it is relevant to this thread. The team that was losing had people switch to spectate and then I became one of the people on the terribly losing side. The imbalance didn’t break the game; I dealt with it and still won from a position that the original poster would have called hopeless (and probably posted a screenshot of the final score in this thread as justification).

Plus, why would you whine? You got the win and you can AFK your way to faster rewards.

I won because I didn’t blame Anet for my misfortune and did not AFK. That was the entire point.

Also, an urge for Hotjoin to not be a complete mess isn’t whining. I want new players to learn and move on to ranked matches, not get farmed and never come back.

I can appreciate your idealism here. But the original post, in the way it generalized all spectators as “noobs” who are “carried” and ultimately reasoning that it was Anet’s spectator mode that caused such a travesty as a 4v5, is close to my quintessential whining game forum post.

It’s asking for fairness in numbers and not setting everything up to fail at every possible match if you get even 1 or 2 people that practice this behavior. I see you don’t mind that hotjoin is practically anything goes, but I view that as WvW more than structured (key word here) PvP.

Are you seriously justifying your entire point here with Anet’s generic term for all non-WvW PvP? Do I even need to say why this is laughable in this context?

Removing spectator mode removes the entire possibility that it even happens, it is the definition of the root cause.

So if someone were to beat you over the head with a dictionary right now, you would destroy all dictionaries to make that person not want to beat some sense into you? Or would it perhaps make more sense to look up “root cause” in the battered dictionary and actually address it? (Hint: The root cause of people flocking to the winning team is the desire to win no matter what and the associated benefits)

Spectator mode is ok, switching teams is not ok. The autobalance is exploited all the time, hotjoin should have the same rules as ranked WITHOUT the rank modify, probably switch skills/traits also, but by any means you shouldn’t quit rage or switch teams in the middle of the match.

I really like how hotjoin is set up compared to battlegrounds in similar games, but I agree that there tends to be a lot of players using autobalance and spectate to get on the winning team, or sometimes just to troll.

It is still much better than the type of behaviour/balance you see in games like Neverwinter, but I don’t know if the benefits of spectator mode has outweigh the negatives.

For me its not a big deal, because if you play a lot then whether a few games are a steamroll or not doesn’t make much difference., also I go to tourney if I want a game with more emphasis on winning/competition- I do tend to get upset if there are 4vs5 etc in tourneys, but in hotjoin it doesn’t seem to matter that much.

Generally what I find is that the attitude of players is different in GW2 than in many other games, and apart from the angsty types and some hate whisperers, people seem to be in hotjoin just for the fun of it rather than grinding which also helps.

Zaxares.5419:

How do you check rank (I’m assuming of the other players) in Spectator mode?

You look in the bottom left corner while spectating a particular player to check their rank.

The reason I’m positive this is a rank problem over just spectator is that we had the same issues when the score board also showed the ranks of the players. People would look at that then blame rank for win/loss, as well as then use the rank display to team up with more experienced players in the next match. Currently spectator is fine, people join, and they’ll join the winning team if they can, that’s logical.

People not joining the losing team often comes down to just the quality of those players. In the case of a complete steam-roll, people won’t join because you can only carry so much in gw2. There are also plenty of cases were players will dodge low ranked players simply because they don’t want to deal with having the rookie on their team. There is also the flip case, were an experienced player is the first to join, and then the newer players flock to that team to ride on their coat-tails, while the other team tends to fill out with moderate/experienced players. I find people are far more willing to join the losing team when the possibility of win can still be scraped out the match. This tends to happen when inexperienced players quit out of a match early, and leave someone who is at least moderately experienced, people become far more willing to join.

I spectate matches all the time and see these trends on a regular basis. People wanting competent teammates is fine, as its frustrating when you’re playing well while people are just apparently at a complete loss as to what they should be doing. As weird as it sounds, I feel hot-join needs a set of 30 and under rooms were newer players are placed. They can spectate any match but only play in these rooms (likewise players above the threshold can spectate the low rank rooms but cannot join). It would certainly help raise the overall quality of the player base. Otherwise you have to accept the fact hot-join rooms will always have a full spectrum of players from first day to 1000+hours played and will never be totally balanced all the time. Overall matches tend to be moderately balanced, when the teams are of the same of same level of experience. Shut-outs happen when one team is far more experienced than the other.

However removal of spectator would cause far more harm than good. You would still get your imbalanced matches (people who are going to leave will leave spectator or not), and fewer people will will develop a thirst for pvp. Spectator modes help keep pvp games alive by helping build hype; not sure if you want to dive in? Watch some matches and become excited. See a new build, then try it for yourself. These things all draw and help keep players interested in pvp. Removing this would cause a substantial drop in the pvp player-base and send us back months ago when barely anyone was playing. No one wants that. Just because some rooms tend to suffer from serious stacking issues is not a good reason to remove a feature we desperately asked for and needed.

On that note, you can always find another room. This problem doesn’t happen in all of them, all of the time.

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

There is a 300 point discrepancy between winning and losing. With 8 minutes (iirc) required to get full credit, you need 3 minutes 12 seconds played on the winning team to get the same reward as 8+ minutes on the losing team.

Perhaps it’s time to accept that hotjoin results mean either very little or nothing at all and reduce the difference in reward between winning and losing teams? Instead of 500-200, perhaps something like 400-300 or 350-350? At 400-300 it would require 6 minutes on the winning team to get the same reward as playing 8+ on the losing team. An added bonus to this would be reduced rewards to farming servers that can get everyone autobalanced to the winning side.

To encourage serious participation on a losing side, perhaps a small reward (25-50 points) should be given for overcoming a large (100+ point) deficit in the match.

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

Hint: you can just join the game once and press spectate asap, then the timer starts to tick and the spectators are still afk watching you. So can you remove the spectate mode in hot-join now?

In addition, most people do not really care about the petty reward of pvp, they just want that win credit.

Furthermore if you actually lose the game, you only get maximum of 200 points even if you participate for more than 8 minutes. As to players who’re on the winning team, they only need to play 2~3 minutes to reach that number.

At the very least, you should make hot-join room separated into “join game” and “watch game”. If you pick “watch game” you cannot join the game and can only watch the game. If you pick “join game”, you’d be assigned to the team with less number, and if the number is equal, to the losing team.

Tasty Kiwi.6837:

What you said is true, no doubt people abuse that system but spectating games did help me a out a little bit, especially watching the rank 80’s play, I copy people’s style at first and then develop my own. Spectating isn’t all necesarilly bad, not everyone is naturally good at pvp, some of us need to watch.

Then you should really watch Solo Q or Team Q instead (IF there’s the option)because in Hot-join, even rank 80 doesn’t really play seriously. It’s just a zerg blob that makes you learn nothing. All you see is Rank 80 messing around with rank 10~30, or 3 people sitting on cap point, or 3 people chasing one guy 24/7.

Numot.3965:

Zaxares.5419:

How do you check rank (I’m assuming of the other players) in Spectator mode?

However removal of spectator would cause far more harm than good. You would still get your imbalanced matches (people who are going to leave will leave spectator or not), and fewer people will will develop a thirst for pvp. Spectator modes help keep pvp games alive by helping build hype; not sure if you want to dive in? Watch some matches and become excited. See a new build, then try it for yourself. These things all draw and help keep players interested in pvp. Removing this would cause a substantial drop in the pvp player-base and send us back months ago when barely anyone was playing. No one wants that. Just because some rooms tend to suffer from serious stacking issues is not a good reason to remove a feature we desperately asked for and needed.

On that note, you can always find another room. This problem doesn’t happen in all of them, all of the time.

I do not ask for the removal of spectate mode, but for the removal of spectate mode IN HOT-JOIN particularly. If you really really want to learn anything, you should be watching fair fight of Solo Q or Team Q, that people are actually TRYING THEIR ABSOLUTE BEST to win the game, but too bad we don’t have this basic option do we?
Plus if you’re actually watching and learning, you shouldn’t be joining at the same time anyway, which is what the hot-join community does most of the time now.

@Numot: Thanks! I always thought that number was their character level. kitten .

The trouble is that even if you join a winning team late, you will likely still end up getting more points than if you joined a losing team early. I feel that the reward needs to be restructured so it’s based more on what YOU did in the match, rather than piling most of the reward on being on the winning team.

As an example, the current system is:

Player A, who actively moved between home and middle, defending and fighting:
- 5 points for Top Defender
- 5 points for Top Kills
- 200 points for a loss.
TOTAL: 210 points

Player B, who basically ran around and capped unguarded points, but not much else:
- 5 points for Top Caps
- 500 points for a win.
TOTAL: 505 points

If we instead adjusted the reward structure so that the bulk of your points comes from your PvP actions, we’d get this instead:

Player A:
- 75 points for defending a point 3 times, 100 bonus points for Top Defender
- 120 points for 12 individual kills, 100 bonus points for Top Kills
- 50 points for a loss.
TOTAL: 445 points

Player B:
- 50 points for capping 5 points, 100 bonus points for Top Caps
- 100 points for a win.
TOTAL: 250 points

So Player A ended up getting more points based on what they did in the match, even though their team ended up losing. I think this would motivate players to be more willing to join the losing team.

Aomine.5012:

I do not ask for the removal of spectate mode, but for the removal of spectate mode IN HOT-JOIN particularly. If you really really want to learn anything, you should be watching fair fight of Solo Q or Team Q, that people are actually TRYING THEIR ABSOLUTE BEST to win the game, but too bad we don’t have this basic option do we?

The problem with adding a spectate mode to Solo Q or Team Q is that it’s hard to prevent people from abusing that system: Some might get a second account, log into both accounts at the same time and use one to play and one to spectate. This way they know exactly where the opponents are and how they play. While this could also be done in Hot Join, you do not really gain that much from it.
A solution would be that you cannot chose a specific game you want to spectate, but that a random game is chose instead. But this makes spectating less valuable, too.

Please don’t move in the direction of using something like personal score (~actions performed) ever again.

We don’t need to further encourage players to cap points with 3 people and zerg for kills while discouraging more defensive playstyles.

The main problem is that the reward gap between wins and losses in hotjoin is too high, taking the focus away from optimal play and moving it to optimal team selection and manipulation. Just close that gap since hotjoin matches don’t matter anyways.

i somewhat disagree with this since i personally have learned quite a lot from watching people play their classes..although i do agree with the replay on sque and tpvp. but i also disagree with your (semi leading to) making hot join like Solo que. its supposed to be casual and if you made hot join like random tourney matches a lot of people would be turned off of pvp when they start the game

Spectate mode is NOT the problem. I think people who starts in a team from the beginning should NEVER get switched.

Consequently the chances for noobs to join the winning team would decrease significantly, because only members of the loosing team leave.

Edit: Moreover, it shouldn’t take too much efford for the developers to implement it.

spectator mode plus auto-balance is fine and working as intended in hotjoin.
right at the start of the game, just keep using auto-balance until the teams are balanced.

i.e. the team with lower score has 1 more player than the team with higher score.

Spectator mode is alright, but I agree that something needs to happen. You basically fight one round, then have to find a different server because it becomes underpopulated.

I’ve noticed this problem too and from the moment I learned of spectator mode I’ve always wondered about simply joining the fad. But I decided not to cause that would make me a part of the problem. I even encounter players gloating about it seemingly encouraging the behavior. One even told me that it’s better to win than carry the losers. The problem is that if they didn’t indulge themselves is such an attitude then this problem wouldn’t even exist. The problem these exploiters are having are completely self-made. I don’t know how to fix these problems but I do want it fixed.

However, I really don’t want to see spectator mode removed. Despite all the players abusing the system I see good in it and find it very enjoyable. I sometimes use it to see how others play but I mostly use it when playing with friends. It allows me to stay in the same server as they are while not being a burden to a team when I go afk.

Novomundum.8325:

I’ve noticed this problem too and from the moment I learned of spectator mode I’ve always wondered about simply joining the fad. But I decided not to cause that would make me a part of the problem. I even encounter players gloating about it seemingly encouraging the behavior. One even told me that it’s better to win than carry the losers. The problem is that if they didn’t indulge themselves is such an attitude then this problem wouldn’t even exist. The problem these exploiters are having are completely self-made. I don’t know how to fix these problems but I do want it fixed.

However, I really don’t want to see spectator mode removed. Despite all the players abusing the system I see good in it and find it very enjoyable. I sometimes use it to see how others play but I mostly use it when playing with friends. It allows me to stay in the same server as they are while not being a burden to a team when I go afk.

So like I said, you should be watching TPVP if you really want to learn anything (but Anet doesn’t want to add it).
What you see in Hot-Join 90% of the time is not even a fair fight, you think you learn something, but in fact it’s just high rank slaughtering low rank, or people ganking someone with number advantage. It does not help a single bit in your performance in real TPVP fight.

The only time you’ll learn something is when you go to a duel room and two high rankers (60+) are actually practice dueling on a node.

Also, someone mentioned allowing Team Q to have spectate will give advantage to exploiters who use duo account to watch the game. This is not really the problem because Anet can simply make the Team Q spectate mode something like records of each completed matches. A spectate video will only generated after a match is finished, so players have a whole bunch of matches to watch, while not giving any duo account opponents any advantage.

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

I see it in more games than I don’t. I don’t even fault them for it. It is not spectate modes fault. It’s that we are allowed to choose our teams at all.

Here’s why this happens step-by-step:

1. Blue team dominates Red team in a smashing victory
2. New game begins, everyone is reluctant to join Red team.
3. Blue team will automatically have an extra team member over Red as people wait to see if they can get on Blue Team.
4. Game starts. Blue rushes toward capture points.
5. Red rushes toward capture points but with one less person and delayed because their last person to join waited till the absolute last second to join, so for the first 1-2 mins of the game they will be effectively two players down.
6. Blue team is firmly established on two capture points. Will maintain lead through the rest of the game in the majority of games.
7. This lasts till no is willing to join Red, then the lobby empties.
8. Everything resets with all new players.

In that situation it can get frustrating to be on Red Team. You get caught in this endless loop of always being on the losing team.

At that point it’s better to check to see if Red team has one less player, if true, then enter spectate mode, putting Red team two players under, this forces an autobalance. Once the autobalance happens, join Blue team before anyone else does.

Victory is assured.

And less rewards or not, it definetly feels like you get further on the reward track bar by doing this than losing 5 games in a row. And even if that feeling is wrong, it’s more fun to win than to be crushed every single time. It’s demoralizing. And does not make for a fun experience.

The solution is simple. It’s not to take out spectate mode, it’s to remove the ability to choose your team in the first place. If you choose spectate you cannot join until the next game. If you choose to play, you are placed in a random team.

I’m surprised this isn’t known by the devs. It’s killing hot join as a fun experience.

I always figured just making the game refrain from auto starting until each team is at 5 members.

The con of this of course is the potential for longer que times, This might be elevated by separating these hot join games from ones that do not have this feature. Much like how in the past there was Hot join servers for 8v8’s and servers for 5v5’s in the same list.

For example when you open the PvP game list you could see some servers that have a “safe start” feature making the game only begin when both teams have the specified amount if players.

The other list could contain servers that function as they do currently. With no starting restrictions for the players who simply want to find a quick match in a matter of seconds.

But I don’t believe they should remove Spectator mode, as I enjoy teaching new players how to play, or utilize a build by letting them watch me use it in real time. This is just one fun feature that would go extinct.

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

it takes like 10 seconds max. in spectator mode to see which team will most likely win

believe me with this pls you really dont sacrifice any rewards by joining spectator mode first … the contrary is the case! because you gain more points in the long run since you minimize the risk of losing a fight which would be the thing that actually makes you lose 300 reward points

it is still stacked teams but new players have it even harder to see why they lose now….

Evan Lesh.3295:

At what point are you seeing players join teams from spectator mode? Rewards are based on time played on a team, so are people forgoing partial rewards to be on the winning team?

I’ve watched people who consistently join a game – and if their team gets about 50 points behind, will swap to the other team that’s winning… and back again if the tables turn.

One night I ran into a really obvious abuse of it, and I called the guy out on it. When called out on it, aside from a lot of raging and calling me a “worthless n****r” (stay classy.) He tried to claim he was justified in abusing the system, and in the end his final argument was the circular logic of “lol it’s hotjoins.” The problem is, hotjoins are terrible because of players like him, who then use the excuse that hotjoins are terrible so it’s totally okay that they do it. PS: I have video of this abuse. The guy would even announce he was switching.

I’ve called out several others I’ve caught blatantly team swapping when their team starts losing, and they all end up with the same “lol it’s hotjoin” and continue to be the plague that makes many hotjoin games awful and ludicrously lopsided.

IsilZha.3608:

The problem is, hotjoins are terrible because of players like him, who then use the excuse that hotjoins are terrible so it’s totally okay that they do it. PS: I have video of this abuse. The guy would even announce he was switching.

I’ve called out several others I’ve caught blatantly team swapping when their team starts losing, and they all end up with the same “lol it’s hotjoin” and continue to be the plague that makes many hotjoin games awful and ludicrously lopsided.

Then they should implement something to fix it. If switching teams gets more rank points than not switching, of course people will switch. If rewards for winning are 250% the rewards for losing, of course people will want to win at any cost. When you can spend 3min12sec on the winning team to get the same reward as 8+min on the losing team…

The vocality of the teamswapping you reference is a good thing, not a bad one. Announcing “I’m abusing the system because I can” and making “Afk Cuz Skyhammer” characters in Solo Queue bring these issues to discussion much faster than stealthily switching teams or putting in 1% effort on Skyhammer to bypass the AFK check.

Stop asking players to be honorable. “It’s just hotjoin”, and if you don’t switch teams someone else on the team will. Why him and not you instead?

DragonWhimsy.6489:

The solution is simple. It’s not to take out spectate mode, it’s to remove the ability to choose your team in the first place. If you choose spectate you cannot join until the next game. If you choose to play, you are placed in a random team.

I totally agree with you. It’s not Spectator that needs to be removed, it’s the option to choose your team. Might I add a queue line where players have to line up in order to get into the game instead of entering with a click of a button. It would stop players who are still trying to exploit the system. E.g. 5vs5 match where red is winning but someone on red left. Instead of some exploiters entering because he clicked join first, the player first in line will be entered.

no, no, you all got it wrong.
hotjoin is fine.

spectator mode and auto balance is fine, both working as intended.
the problem is, the people are not using it to help their team.