Guild Wars 2

edit:
i moved my post here, due to forum new page bug.

how to remove stacking:

basic essentials:
- remove ability to choose teams (blue or red)
- shuffles players into teams according to their rank
- remove public scoreboard
- replace with personal scoreboard
- remove rank information from spectator mode
- spectators automatically joins losing team when attempting to join winning team

a bit drastic:
- animal rank finisher can only be seen by yourself, others will see a standard spear (in anet hotjoin only, not sure if this is possible to code)
- replace the player names above their heads with generic names
(Male Human Warrior, Female Asura Mesmer, etc)
- team chat still shows players name name
- local /say chat will bubble chat while in the game

with the public scoreboard removed, players will not know what players joined what team. further masking their animal rank finishers and names will probably make it very difficult to stack teams.

extremely drastic:
- rework the rewards system.
- everyone gets the same amount of rewards regardless of win or lose
(200 rank points and 10 silvers)
- earn additional rewards based on their own contribution to the team score

personal score board:
5 points per kill

1 points per 3 seconds contesting neutral point if team is holding 1 point
2 points per 3 seconds contesting neutral point if team is holding 2 points

1 points per 3 seconds contesting own point if team is holding 1 point
2 points per 3 seconds contesting own point if team is holding 2 points
3 points per 3 seconds contesting own point if team is holding 3 points

25 points per animal kill
150 points per lord kill
15 points per spirit ball ascended neutral / opponent point
30 points per spirit ball ascended own point

3 points per team kill after communing ferocity (until expired)
1 – 3 points per 3 seconds after communing stillness (until expired)
[^ your team needs to hold at least 1 point for this bonus to kick in]

1-3 points per 3 seconds after communing tranquility (until all points neutralized)

etc

basically the personal scoreboard will attempt to let the player know how much they contributed to their team.

at the end of the match, players earn extra rewards based on their personal score. if their team won, the extra rewards is doubled.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Hotjoin is going to be chaotic no matter what we do since people are free to leave at any time. For people who are wanting a more structured experience, why not play solo or team arena? I’m not asking this to sidestep your concerns, but rather to find out why there is a desire to force structure upon hotjoin when there is already a more structured game mode. This would help us determine if hotjoin actually needs some restructuring, or if there is a better place these types of players can go.

Because hotjoin gives rankpoints. Some people think rankpoints = high level pvp.
Delete the points from hotjoin and soloq will go to the next level with more players.

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Hotjoin is going to be chaotic no matter what we do since people are free to leave at any time. For people who are wanting a more structured experience, why not play solo or team arena? I’m not asking this to sidestep your concerns, but rather to find out why there is a desire to force structure upon hotjoin when there is already a more structured game mode. This would help us determine if hotjoin actually needs some restructuring, or if there is a better place these types of players can go.

Because hotjoin gives rankpoints. Some people think rankpoints = high level pvp.
Delete the points from hotjoin and soloq will go to the next level with more players.

no. bad idea.
instead, increase rewards in solo arena / team arena tremendously.

make it losing also rewards more than winning in hotjoin.
perhaps more people may play solo arena or team arena then.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

make it losing also rewards more than winning in hotjoin.
perhaps more people may play solo arena or team arena then.

They tried it last year , when the November of 2013 buffed the rewards in soloque 1 last time up to 1500 points per win .
Afterwards they aimmed to accuse 8v8 of beeing too rewarding ….

You know what … like the community wanted to bring all classes up to the Guardian level …
( when the comminity asked repetedly other ppl why Guardians are a ’’must’’ for a team > their answer was that Guardian is the ‘’role model’’ which every class must strive + and we must buff up to him) … and later on the same ppl said ’’what the kitten are the developers do , why we have this sucky bunker-condition meta ….

I say make Hotjoins as stricked as possible it gets …. one last push …. with new modes and ‘’trial cookies’’ we will get them back …. i hope …

DaveGan.8065:

I played spvp hotjoin before it became the Neverwinter Online version we have now and never saw this issue.

Please don’t use your supposed account age to try to strengthen your argument or weaken those of others, as it’s having the opposite effect. My account was created in beta and the early PvP reward system (based on individual score) was one of the primary reasons (along with magic find gear) I deemed GW2 a joke and quit the game for over a year.

It has nothing really to do with rewards, its mainly about winning.

I think you’d be a minority opinion who believes that. Some here believe win-loss rewards won’t become balanced because it would drive some of the hotjoin custom server farmers to AFK Team Queue matches.

Your line of reasoning 1-7 is what happens now. If teams are randomly assigned and players cannot choose teams/swap then the whole process from point 1 to 7 is eliminated, problem solved.

Let me rewrite the scenario for you with randomly assigned teams

1. Rank 25 player is assigned to red, Rank 50 player is assigned to blue
2. Rank 70 player is assigned to red, Rank 45 player is assigned to blue
3. Rank 60 player is assigned to red, Rank 40 player is assigned to blue
4. Rank 10 player is assigned to red, Rank 30 player is assigned to blue
5. Rank 60 player sees who just joined red and leaves to try to become the imbalance in Server 2.
6. The game tries to fill in the missing spot with a Rank 55 player. The Rank 70 player leaves for Server 3.
7. The game tries to fill in the missing spot with a Rank 80 player. It turns out he’s just testing a build and doesn’t care about win/loss. As a result the Rank 25 player leaves for Server 4.
8. In Server 2, the Rank 60 player became the 9th player to join and turned a 4v4 match into 5v4. Quickly helping to establish a lead, people kept leaving the other side and the match never became 5v4 for long.
9. In Server 3, the Rank 70 player found himself assigned as the 10th player in a 50-150 game, as it had remained 5v4 like Server 1. He quickly leaves Server 3 for Server 5.
10. Did Server 4 turn out like Server 2 or Server 3? Who knows? But we’re pretty sure it was lopsided either way.

Let me spell it out for you. There are more ways to manipulate matches than there are ways to stop them by force. Until you understand this you’re going to continue to be disappointed by people who “blatantly manipulate matches.”

Well I have always loved the spvp side of the game and still do. There was never a problem like this before spectate mode was added, so experience tells me that we can enjoy games that are not subject to cheating every match if we prevent players from using spectate to force autobalance. There is no need for anything fancy to solve that issue.

What you described above is a system that makes it much more difficult to cheat by stacking high rank players at the start of a game. That’s good, it should be difficult to cheat, now it is virtually a feature of the game. You have said yourself that you do it because everyone else does.

Also you ignore that autobalance cannot be forced easily after the game starts if players are prevented from going freely from playing-spectate/team-swap-playing. I am sure some scrubs will try to do what you suggested above, but its a lot of effort to go through just to win a hotjoin.

I can tell from your posts that you won’t be one of those scrubs.

Why this chaotic mess Evan? I’ll list a few.

1) you removed 8 vs 8. These matches always filled fast, and at 7 vs 8 (or 8 vs 8 ) spectating to force change in team composition was hard. Secondly 1 player ‘fewer’, at a base of 8 is much more forgiving then 1/5 (wich is 20%!).

2) Loosing team rewards. I know from wvw why you can’t reward defending much, I get it. Loosing pvp is probably similar reason (afk, leeching, no incentive to win etc). Still getting lousy 60-120 rank points, for a loose, when you fought like a beast, feels very stupid, and almost like being trolled. I know this is not gonna get changed, but I had to list it anyway. It sometimes makes ragequitting tempting.

SoloQ (personal opinion, you can’t change it, so respect mine, and I respect yours) is boring. It’s why I rarely join it. First of all it’s lotery. I always end up in the wrong team comp. When 90% is power build, i get to few warriors (who lead in offensive power, and winning the match generally in teamQ), and to much thiefs (or ranger, and others for that matter). When 90% of the match is condi build, I get to few engie, necro’s, mesmers, and to much others. It’s random, but 90% of the time, the above scenario is true. Wich means it feels like fighting a virtual server, that cheats, cause you get the wrong profession in your team. Sure player skills should matter, and they do, but Team composition matters more imo. And the servers divide them wrong. And getting time and time again misplaced matches is frustrating, to the point it becomes boring.

Secondly, SoloQ/TeamQ is to time consuming and not rewarding enough. Why? There’s a Queue. And and unpredictable one at that. Sometimes 7 minutes, sometimes 20 sec. Since you know you hate 7 min, you go hotjoin. Then when you fight hard, and are about to win (400 vs 350,), the message pops ‘join now, solo Q’. You press cancel of course, you just fought hard for a win and are about to get it. The message of soloQ pops again… GRRR cancel, you kitten, i’m winning here!, at 480 points you feel the victory and reward progression coming. POOF. You are pulled out of the match, didn’t get any reward, progress, any thing else, and you are dropped in a SoloQ, that makes you even more kittened cause unbalanced team composition (see above).

And soloQ is to elitary. The number of times, people on their own overcame frustrations, worked together (using team chat), splitting jobs, using best team spirit to make a loss/status quo, into a win, i can count on one hand. All the other SoloQ matches where ‘looser, get out of here’. ‘Omg enemy team comp, OP, i’m afking this match’. Or: completely silent chat, nobody doing a thing, but their own thing. And that’s supposed to be the ‘best of pvp’ (I suppose it is, as it should be better then hotjoin, and theres nothing above Team/soloQ)? Sorrie but it feels the worst of pvp.

I know many people feel the same, and i think this is the source of the spectate spamming.

I think setup hotjoin SPECIFICALLY for team death match / capture the flag / any other game modes you guys eventually bring in, then have conquest as STRICTLY unranked or ranked play as thats the main game mode you guys want to focus on and balance around.

With that said I’m sure many many players would appreciate the following idea. Take existing maps clip and trim it to a smaller area and use that for deathmatch. An example lets say unranked and ranked conquest becomes a thing and hotjoin remains for the other game types. Trim Forest of Niflhel to ONLY be the beach….you keep spawns as is….block north doors, block all three exits from the beach to the actual nodes so the map is tiny just the beach….no capture nodes….go nuts …. this one map can be used for 2 game modes….team death match, 2v2 arena ( if thats ever implemented ) and hell even a Free For All mode would be fun….make everyone spawn in the middle of the beach facing outward to each other….timer counts down and BOOM! Free for all. You have the map would take a little time to trim….you have team deathmatch as a system already that could be implemented so quickly.

Now lets look at some other maps…..Battle for Khylo….why not have a Team Deathmatch where its its just a map of the clocktower tiny thing and periodically an NPC fires the treb at mid. Its a team death match in clocktower….not saying these ideas are great….but they seem like little effort for big reward….functionality for a new game type people would thoroughly appreciate.

Yasha.5963:

What you described above is a system that makes it much more difficult to cheat by stacking high rank players at the start of a game. That’s good, it should be difficult to cheat, now it is virtually a feature of the game. You have said yourself that you do it because everyone else does.

Also you ignore that autobalance cannot be forced easily after the game starts if players are prevented from going freely from playing-spectate/team-swap-playing. I am sure some scrubs will try to do what you suggested above, but its a lot of effort to go through just to win a hotjoin.

I can tell from your posts that you won’t be one of those scrubs.

This match fixing looks new to you because it took time to discover it and have the idea get spread. I don’t know exactly when it took off, but it almost certainly started because of the disparity between the winners’ and losers’ rewards. I still don’t feel hotjoin is competitive enough to justify a gap similar to what is found in arenas.

The above is done even now quite often when there is a lopsided match or outlier rank (extremely low or extremely high on a relative scale) in the game. Some of them don’t realize they can spectate-autobalance and others feel it is too toxic. It feels like there should be a significant difference between those who leave a game because it is way imbalanced and those who leave a game to try to farm a way elsewhere. In reality it’s nearly impossible to distinguish that motive.

I often end up being a player people stack on (I usually try to pick a side early to break the ice and get things started), and I do tPvP when friends are online. As a result of this I am personally not worried about hotjoin rank rewards and usually manipulate matches not to get wins but to make sure others blatantly stacking don’t get their wins very easily. Just as you are troubled by people abusing the system for wins, I am troubled that one of the few ways for me to help even the odds is to AFK (with the orb on Spirit Watch for even more effect) or spam suicide (Skyhammer).

To me, the autobalance system is evidence that there is a social contract here: ANet keep the matches balanced so the players play fairly in the spirit of the game. The severe imbalance in hotjoin indicates ANet is not effectively fulfilling their end of the contract, and the match abuse is the players’ response.

Maybe if you really want to keep hotjoin fun and casual, something drastic has to be done: perhaps 200 rank point participation reward with a 300 point bonus for winning obtainable only 5 times a day (enough for most casual players). As that win bonus is capped there will no longer be the rush to abuse matches to get it as it will just quickly cap itself naturally.

For those who want the old 8v8’s back: the imbalance will be even worse now that people are more used to 5v5 and playing conquest.

Bunkers and AoE setups (staff ele, hambow) will reign supreme, and it will be much more difficult to find points with nobody on them. Good luck taking a point if there is a bunker too. By the time you kill him he will have 1-2 more reinforcements than you are used to in 5v5 and they will be able to keep the point contested long enough for that bunker to get back.

That said, 8v8 might work if they change the point capping/decapping system to simply take the difference between the players on each side fighting near the point a-la GW1 Alliance Battles.

Just read the opening post, was neutral but I forgot something and i gotta agree:

- REMOVE hotjoin altogether or at least remove and move spectator to REAL TPVP

I never had a problem with features, (i even taugh a friend with spectator) but now it hit me thats this stuff is ACTUALY DOING HARM. its teaching ppl how to hotjoin and we all know what poison that is. + youll make more money with ppl buying more customs, if you only add spectator to tpvp and customs.

DaveGan.8065:

This match fixing looks new to you because it took time to discover it and have the idea get spread. I don’t know exactly when it took off, but it almost certainly started because of the disparity between the winners’ and losers’ rewards. I still don’t feel hotjoin is competitive enough to justify a gap similar to what is found in arenas.

It did take time for the idea to catch on after spectate mode was introduced, but we saw none of the forced-auto balance before spectate mode because it wasn’t easy/convenient to do like it is now.

I don’t particularly care what measures are taken to prevent this “meta game”of forcing auto balance, but I do know that your idea of bumping up rewards for the losing team will increase afkers/bots and will not stop people’s desire to win and stomp others. I have also seen the exact same thing tried in Neverwinter online and it did nothing to solve the problems there.

There were so many people on the forum of that game who, like you, were against the devs actually enforcing rules on the game. And it just turned it to kittene. I don’t want to see the same thing happen here.

DaveGan.8065:

For those who want the old 8v8’s back: the imbalance will be even worse now that people are more used to 5v5 and playing conquest.

Now this I agree on. The community back in the day was crying for 5vs5 to become the norm, for various reasons. It seems most of that crowd has left now though because all I seem to hear these days is how 8vs8 was so good.

Just remove hotjoin and add a non-rated tpvp being exactly the same as rated except for the fact that only winning team is gonna get (Way less than rated tpvp ofc) rank points and rewards (Rewards lol…nah just give them the same, can’t even think about something less rewarding than those reterded chest full of pve crap), with no spectator, fixed specs, disonhorable debuff and so on…so maybe, just maybe, ppl would finally learn how to later play in rated stuff wihout being roflstomped by high ladder orcs and not being afraid about your worthless ladder position if you want to go just for fun.

You’re welcome.

Yasha.5963:

DaveGan.8065:

For those who want the old 8v8’s back: the imbalance will be even worse now that people are more used to 5v5 and playing conquest.

Now this I agree on. The community back in the day was crying for 5vs5 to become the norm, for various reasons. It seems most of that crowd has left now though because all I seem to hear these days is how 8vs8 was so good.

I was one of those who, at that time, said that 8v8 was plain crap…and yes…8v8 would still be plain crap.

Yasha.5963:

I don’t particularly care what measures are taken to prevent this “meta game”of forcing auto balance, but I do know that your idea of bumping up rewards for the losing team will increase afkers/bots and will not stop people’s desire to win and stomp others. I have also seen the exact same thing tried in Neverwinter online and it did nothing to solve the problems there.

I’m going to call you out here for having your vision clouded by your experience in another game. Raising rank points for the loser would be done concurrently with reducing the winning reward. AFKers farming rank points are not a problem with hotjoin (Currently if you want to AFK you would do it in Solo Queue or Team Queue. In fact pushing the AFK farming to hotjoin would clean up the rated arenas, which would be a net positive). On the other hand, custom servers make it so bot farming (can also be done manually of course) depends only on winning rewards (keep autobalancing members of one team to another and volunteering until everyone has win credit).

I’ve also become made aware of the difference in our priorities now. While you value clean matches with no tolerance for manipulation, I value balanced matches, tolerating manipulation so long as it is done to correct the imbalance. Perhaps Evan should comment on whether he prioritizes clean matches or balanced matches, since it seems clear to me that we will not be getting both.

Taking out spectate mode in Hot Join is NOT the solution. Watching how others play the game is fun and there’s absolutely no reason to take it out. It’s also a wonderful teaching tool. There’s absolutely no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater, or waste a feature that it took the devs so much time to implement.

You’re all waaaaaaaaay over thinking this. Just remove the ability for us to choose our teams at all. You don’t have to worry about players trying to game the system. And players don’t have to worry about which team is ahead, or which team has the players with the higher ranks. It will all just work. Like in every other MMO with instanced PvP. We’re not rediscovering new territory here. It’s not rocket science. No other game I’ve seen has this problem. Also known as “STOP doing things different just to be different”.

Choice is not always good. There is no reason we need to be able to select our team in a quick join game style. I can’t even think of another MMO that allows you to (with good reason apparently).

This is NOT a lobby in a FPS’er game. Stop treating it that way.

No we don’t need another casual lobby type. Why have hot join at all? All you’re doing is fracturing the player base in that case.

And no, the answer isn’t saying “just use the tournament modes”. I’m a casual PvP’er. I will NEVER use those modes. It will NEVER matter what rewards you add to them. I don’t like the sort of people that join them. I don’t want to play with them or interact with them.

I just want a fun way to divert myself from what I’m usually doing in the game, get my dailies done, and make progress on my reward track. I will never care about ladders or rank points. If you force me to in some way I’ll just stop PvP’ing. And given the nature of casual players, I’m betting you lose a lot of others as well.

I’m not putting down the players who enjoy competitive PvP mind you, but I’m offering the perspective of a casual player, which is probably not heard often in this particular forum, despite most likely making up the majority of the people who play the game mode.

Well dragon spectate does pose one problem—apparently spectators are counted for the purposes of whether a server is “full” or not. Often a player who wants to “just watch” ends up preventing a 10th actual player from getting directed to the server via the play now button

Evan Lesh.3295:

Is this entire thread a product of not having enough room for casual players to progress within our modes? If we did have an unranked arena, would hotjoin be as big of a problem?

I do think we need an unranked arena.
I do not think an unranked arena could currently replace hoitjoin.

There is still no option to play with a friend outside of hotjoin (unless you are willing to pug the team q, where you obviously then will fight a full team quite often.) I do think this is one of the reasons people are interested in hotjoin in the first place.

There are however, plenty of possible solutions to the force swap issue:

• Make it possible to only join the loosing team.
• Give people a debuff when going to spectate, which prevents them from rejoining either for the remaining time of the match or for 1 min.
• Disable going into spectate mode once the game has started. People spectating at that point can still join the match, but not return to spectate mode.

I tried out a new spec in hotjoin yesterday.
Here is how my games went. When we were behind 50 points, the first person left and the second person went spectating, forcing a swap. The person making the force swap instantly joined the other team, the person force swapped instantly joined spectate, forcing yet another swap. And that is how the rest of the match continued.

Game 2: same thing
Game 3: I was on the winning team but got force swapped
Game 4: I got force swapped
Game 5: I got force swapped

It is not enjoyable, so if you want to keep hotjoin (which I think you should) you really need to look into this.

Evan Lesh.3295:

For people who are wanting a more structured experience, why not play solo or team arena?

As to why not go team q? I don’t always have a full team. I do almost always want to pvp.

As to why not go solo q? Because of several reasons. Skyhammer, 4vs5 and class stacking being the most apparent ones.

IsilZha.3608:

DaveGan.8065:

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…

Yeah, I’ve suggested before it could be a simple fix: Don’t allow players to switch to the other team once they’ve picked one. Even if they drop back to spectator, don’t allow them to swap to the other team.

Sounds good in paper.

But if this was implemented. I would just change matches. It wouldn’t solve anything.

runeblade.7514:

IsilZha.3608:

DaveGan.8065:

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…

Yeah, I’ve suggested before it could be a simple fix: Don’t allow players to switch to the other team once they’ve picked one. Even if they drop back to spectator, don’t allow them to swap to the other team.

Sounds good in paper.

But if this was implemented. I would just change matches. It wouldn’t solve anything.

There was no real issue before spectate to force auto balance became the hotjoin meta, which suggests that not only does it sound good on paper but it actually works.

Some people will still float around either because they want to find a easy fight or leave matches that they are having a bad time in, but this wasn’t an issue in the past so is unlikely to become one now.

Yasha.5963:

There was no real issue before spectate to force auto balance became the hotjoin meta, which suggests that not only does it sound good on paper but it actually works.

Some people will still float around either because they want to find a easy fight or leave matches that they are having a bad time in, but this wasn’t an issue in the past so is unlikely to become one now.

Is it people getting wins they “don’t deserve” that upsets you more or people getting out of losses? When the “meta” changes everything around it changes. You won’t go back to the “good old days” simply by restricting one thing or two.

What about the an extreme opposite viewpoint, which looks at spectate/autobalance as a (arguably sub-standard) solution to a problem (extreme imbalance and uneven games in hotjoin)? Much like the matter of AFK in Skyhammer, the issue for people is whether or not the ends justify the means.

While you look at the meta as “I now have a cheap way to generate wins!”, others look at it as “I can finally do something about these imbalanced matches!” Of course a solution from the former perspective will look at restricting the cheat, and a solution from the latter will try to address what is believed to be the underlying root of the issue.

In other words, what is the bigger problem in casual PvP: match manipulation or imbalanced matches? I think people in this thread are divided on this question, and that is where a lot of the disagreement is coming from.

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!

This. I mean, how hard can it be to do this? On the other hand we are still starting matches in arena with 4v5, so I guess we won’t see any changes in the coming year…

They should also add spectator mode to arenas. Like, you can opt to spectate an ongoing match. This would allow newer players to watch the better players and learn from them.

DaveGan.8065:

Yasha.5963:

There was no real issue before spectate to force auto balance became the hotjoin meta, which suggests that not only does it sound good on paper but it actually works.

Some people will still float around either because they want to find a easy fight or leave matches that they are having a bad time in, but this wasn’t an issue in the past so is unlikely to become one now.

Is it people getting wins they “don’t deserve” that upsets you more or people getting out of losses? When the “meta” changes everything around it changes. You won’t go back to the “good old days” simply by restricting one thing or two.

What about the an extreme opposite viewpoint, which looks at spectate/autobalance as a (arguably sub-standard) solution to a problem (extreme imbalance and uneven games in hotjoin)? Much like the matter of AFK in Skyhammer, the issue for people is whether or not the ends justify the means.

While you look at the meta as “I now have a cheap way to generate wins!”, others look at it as “I can finally do something about these imbalanced matches!” Of course a solution from the former perspective will look at restricting the cheat, and a solution from the latter will try to address what is believed to be the underlying root of the issue.

In other words, what is the bigger problem in casual PvP: match manipulation or imbalanced matches? I think people in this thread are divided on this question, and that is where a lot of the disagreement is coming from.

No one was really crying on the forums about teams being unbalanced in hotjoin before spectate/team swap as introduced because when players couldn’t force auto balance or stack, games ended up being fairly even on the whole since teams were randomly assigned.

You and Demio are trying to tell us that this is a great new feature. I personally preferred the largely even and comparatively balanced games before players were allowed to use this new feature to force autobalance and stack games to their advantage.

PPl moaned 24/7 for 8v8 to be removed , BEFORE and AFTER the swap team was introduced . Never once we had these problems you are describing .
Lets say they introduce your plan then …. what next ?
Introduce a 30 min disshonor mechanic afterwards in order to prevent even more the 4v5 ?

Like those 2 are saying , we must create a ’’different’’ system whithin the game .
In this period you need viewers … you need happiness…. not a ‘’forcefully way’’ so ppl can learn ….

After these 3 tournaments you can do wathever you want (destroy Hj+ do implant whatever the competive players wants) , and in the last 4 months (once again …) focus on casuals players and bring them back for the other Tournament .

By having the old ggs and their marvelous ideas about rewarding every team by simply signing upo in the tournament or winning the match > automatically increased the Teams numbers from 40 (in last year) to 260 .
I simply casual ’’thing’’ increased the teams , rather than wasting trillions on money on implanting Competive features …

Otherwise there will a points and the history will repeat itself where like other games , where competive team existed + the game was marvelous , but you didnt have something that League of Legends helps them to dominate the twitch 1st spots . And with no Viewers > the next cash prize will be directed to the sequel , rather than any other Tournament

Stick to balance + what game mode you find fun to play on Tournaments + what other UI ytou want (like the quick commant of Smite) and leave the competiveness OFF the hotjoins …

Killthehealersffs.8940:

PPl moaned 24/7 for 8v8 to be removed , BEFORE and AFTER the swap team was introduced . Never once we had these problems you are describing .
Lets say they introduce your plan then …. what next ?
Introduce a 30 min disshonor mechanic afterwards in order to prevent even more the 4v5 ?

Like those 2 are saying , we must create a ’’different’’ system whithin the game .
In this period you need viewers … you need happiness…. not a ‘’forcefully way’’ so ppl can learn ….

After these 3 tournaments you can do wathever you want (destroy Hj+ do implant whatever the competive players wants) , and in the last 4 months (once again …) focus on casuals players and bring them back for the other Tournament .

By having the old ggs and their marvelous ideas about rewarding every team by simply signing upo in the tournament or winning the match > automatically increased the Teams numbers from 40 (in last year) to 260 .
I simply casual ’’thing’’ increased the teams , rather than wasting trillions on money on implanting Competive features …

Otherwise there will a points and the history will repeat itself where like other games , where competive team existed + the game was marvelous , but you didnt have something that League of Legends helps them to dominate the twitch 1st spots . And with no Viewers > the next cash prize will be directed to the sequel , rather than any other Tournament

Stick to balance + what game mode you find fun to play on Tournaments + what other UI ytou want (like the quick commant of Smite) and leave the competiveness OFF the hotjoins …

I can hardly understand what you are saying, but nice paragraphing I guess.

Yasha.5963:

You and Demio are trying to tell us that this is a great new feature. I personally preferred the largely even and comparatively balanced games before players were allowed to use this new feature to force autobalance and stack games to their advantage.

Please, stop putting words in our mouths. I have implied multiple times that spectate/autobalance this is the lesser of two evils, and also the effect of the greater injustice. I won’t speak for him, but I would bet that Deimos would probably agree. Please see things on a spectrum, not your ideal fantasy black and white.

Your “good old days” were back when rewards were based on personal score. Team placement (and thus match balance) was not an issue because win/loss was not tied to rewards. Many people cried about that. Quite a few quit PvP or the game entirely (I was one of them, for well over a year) because of all the bad play it encouraged and cultivated. Spectate/autobalance was introduced to hotjoin after the rewards were changed to win/loss, and this is by far the biggest obstacle.

People seek to win now for the same reasons they used to 5-cap home and kill the NPC on forest with 5 people: rewards. Even if you disable team selection people can (do and will continue to) simply try their luck crashing another random server. Hardly any time lost if you discover imbalance early (a rank 10 full signet rifle warrior on your team who fights off point). Why settle for 200 points and 10 minutes wasted when you can continue to try roll for 500?

As an analogy of what it feels like you’re doing, it’s like someone calling the ele FGS#4 skill broken, and proposing a fix by swapping it with the FGS#5 skill so hitting 4 is no longer an “I win” button.

DaveGan.8065:

Yasha.5963:

You and Demio are trying to tell us that this is a great new feature. I personally preferred the largely even and comparatively balanced games before players were allowed to use this new feature to force autobalance and stack games to their advantage.

Please, stop putting words in our mouths. I have implied multiple times that spectate/autobalance this is the lesser of two evils, and also the effect of the greater injustice. I won’t speak for him, but I would bet that Deimos would probably agree. Please see things on a spectrum, not your ideal fantasy black and white.

.

Your posts make it seem that you really want to maintain the “feature” that lets you cheat in games because you are totally focused on rewards and enjoy having an easy way to maximize them.

Your “solution” doesn’t address the issue at all and would only make matters worse by creating more problems, but it does fit with your obvious focus on maximizing rewards.

Yasha.5963:

DaveGan.8065:

Yasha.5963:

You and Demio are trying to tell us that this is a great new feature. I personally preferred the largely even and comparatively balanced games before players were allowed to use this new feature to force autobalance and stack games to their advantage.

Please, stop putting words in our mouths. I have implied multiple times that spectate/autobalance this is the lesser of two evils, and also the effect of the greater injustice. I won’t speak for him, but I would bet that Deimos would probably agree. Please see things on a spectrum, not your ideal fantasy black and white.

.

Your posts make it seem that you really want to maintain the “feature” that lets you cheat in games because you are totally focused on rewards and enjoy having an easy way to maximize them.

Your “solution” doesn’t address the issue at all and would only make matters worse by creating more problems, but it does fit with your obvious focus on maximizing rewards.

First off, I play arenas when I care about getting rank points fast. When I play hotjoin I typically try to even up teams and/or sabotage a group of people stacking.

You’re so convinced I have a self-serving agenda that you’ve chosen to disregard fairly simple logic. In the current system I can ensure 500 points in most of my matches, a net of +300 from a loss. If we narrowed the gap to 400/300 I could only ensure 400 points in my matches, and only net +100. Please tell me how this “maximizes” my rewards. If anything I want them to be more balanced so I don’t see 9 out of 10 hotjoin matches with a 4v5 when it is clear the team of 4 has people leaving because of the rank 12 ranger or rank 9 signet warrior.

Perhaps I need to be more blunt. Any restrictions put up will have to be universal restrictions. They will either be overbearing and turn people off from PvP/hotjoin or they will be too lax or misguided and be easy to exploit. There are not enough ways to force people to play with the handicap known as inexperienced teammates (we will just find another game), so why not make it more rewarding to try to do so?

Over half of my games today had a rank 12 or lower, and in every single case they were on the team with 3-4 players vs a full 5 on the other side. How do you think these players feel when they see people leaving constantly knowing they’re being avoided by everyone? What can be done to reduce or eliminate these situations where these new players are seen as HIV carriers dripping blood all over the place?

Hot Join as it is, is a casual format designed to maximize use of a player’s time. That it has some exploitable features is unfortunate but since we shouldn’t put much weight in the value of winning hot join matches, I think people should think twice before suggesting something as drastic as removing (the very comprehensive and useful) spectator mode.

Not only can you observe a player from the first person, complete with targeting and skill usage, but you can look at equipment and trait choices. That’s an invaluable tool for learning new strategies or ideas about gear selection that maybe you wouldn’t have thought about on your own. So, because a very casual PvP format can be somewhat exploited… you want to completely erase this feature?

mooty.4560:

Hot Join as it is, is a casual format designed to maximize use of a player’s time. That it has some exploitable features is unfortunate but since we shouldn’t put much weight in the value of winning hot join matches, I think people should think twice before suggesting something as drastic as removing (the very comprehensive and useful) spectator mode.

Not only can you observe a player from the first person, complete with targeting and skill usage, but you can look at equipment and trait choices. That’s an invaluable tool for learning new strategies or ideas about gear selection that maybe you wouldn’t have thought about on your own. So, because a very casual PvP format can be somewhat exploited… you want to completely erase this feature?

“Somewhat exploited” is a bit of an understatement, but yes throwing out a perfectly good tool that took a long time to develop would be bad. Just tweaking the system so that spectators cannot rejoin a game (for example) would pretty much stop the constant forced auto-balance in hotjoin.

I think pretty much only the OP wanted to completely remove spectate.

mooty.4560:

Hot Join as it is, is a casual format designed to maximize use of a player’s time. That it has some exploitable features is unfortunate but since we shouldn’t put much weight in the value of winning hot join matches, I think people should think twice before suggesting something as drastic as removing (the very comprehensive and useful) spectator mode.

Not only can you observe a player from the first person, complete with targeting and skill usage, but you can look at equipment and trait choices. That’s an invaluable tool for learning new strategies or ideas about gear selection that maybe you wouldn’t have thought about on your own. So, because a very casual PvP format can be somewhat exploited… you want to completely erase this feature?

You are right hotjoin is very casual. In fact it is the only pvp a lot of players have any acquaintance with at all; it is more often than not an absolutely miserable experience. Spectator can be easily enough separated as several people have suggested by either moving it to queued games or removing a players ability to join one or both teams for a match.

Hotjoin should make players want to play more pvp, not less.

DaveGan.8065:

Yasha.5963:

DaveGan.8065:

Yasha.5963:

You and Demio are trying to tell us that this is a great new feature. I personally preferred the largely even and comparatively balanced games before players were allowed to use this new feature to force autobalance and stack games to their advantage.

Please, stop putting words in our mouths. I have implied multiple times that spectate/autobalance this is the lesser of two evils, and also the effect of the greater injustice. I won’t speak for him, but I would bet that Deimos would probably agree. Please see things on a spectrum, not your ideal fantasy black and white.

.

Your posts make it seem that you really want to maintain the “feature” that lets you cheat in games because you are totally focused on rewards and enjoy having an easy way to maximize them.

Your “solution” doesn’t address the issue at all and would only make matters worse by creating more problems, but it does fit with your obvious focus on maximizing rewards.

In the current system I can ensure 500 points in most of my matches, a net of +300 from a loss. If we narrowed the gap to 400/300 I could only ensure 400 points in my matches, and only net +100.

It amazes me how obsessed you are with rewards, you keep posting these calculations all focused on rewards and how to milk the system.

I don’t even think about rewards when I play, except when my inventory is full and I have to go to the bank and try to offload all the boxes. Sometimes I just send my rewards to random people so I am not encumbered (since there is no bank in the mists).

We had like a year and a half with no rewards and yet people still played all the time. These goodies are a nice bonus, but non-pve folk are likely more interested in winning or showing their kitten than in the shinies.

DaveGan.8065:

Yasha.5963:

You and Demio are trying to tell us that this is a great new feature. I personally preferred the largely even and comparatively balanced games before players were allowed to use this new feature to force autobalance and stack games to their advantage.

Please, stop putting words in our mouths. I have implied multiple times that spectate/autobalance this is the lesser of two evils, and also the effect of the greater injustice. I won’t speak for him, but I would bet that Deimos would probably agree. Please see things on a spectrum, not your ideal fantasy black and white..

and yes, i agree that spectator auto balance is the lesser of the two evils, but if it is used to help the weaker team then it is not that bad, at least that is what i think. but nowadays i am lazy to force auto balance anyway since i have already fulfilled my 20/20 monthly wins. perhaps replacing that with 20 games played would be a first step.

and thanks DaveGan for getting my name right.

as for fixing hotjoin, let’s keep it simple.

- remove rank information from spectator mode
- remove character names from spectator mode
- remove public score board

this may help prevent stacking

Yasha.5963:

It amazes me how obsessed you are with rewards, you keep posting these calculations all focused on rewards and how to milk the system.

You call me out on a selfish agenda and when I show how wrong you are your comeback is the equivalent of LOL Y SO SRS. I should have quoted my other suggestion a few posts up here as well so others can see how blinded you are by your false justice.

my earlier post

Maybe if you really want to keep hotjoin fun and casual, something drastic has to be done: perhaps 200 rank point participation reward with a 300 point bonus for winning obtainable only 5 times a day (enough for most casual players). As that win bonus is capped there will no longer be the rush to abuse matches to get it as it will just quickly cap itself naturally.

I’d love to hear about how a win bonus cap would further my agenda of maximizing rewards!

Yasha.5963:

We had like a year and a half with no rewards and yet people still played all the time. These goodies are a nice bonus, but non-pve folk are likely more interested in winning or showing their kitten than in the shinies.

Loot rewards were introduced because PvP was dying/dead. They were not introduced for the people already in PvP, but for everyone else. Yet another “good old days” misrecollection.

Reward imbalance is why we have situations like:

my earlier post

Over half of my games today had a rank 12 or lower, and in every single case they were on the team with 3-4 players vs a full 5 on the other side. How do you think these players feel when they see people leaving constantly knowing they’re being avoided by everyone? What can be done to reduce or eliminate these situations where these new players are seen as HIV carriers dripping blood all over the place?

This is far worse an issue than your supposed outrage when someone deems a consistent 4v5 situation a farce and acts on it. Spectate/autobalance didn’t break the spirit of the game; it was broken long before it got to that point.

DaveGan.8065:

-snip-
Over half of my games today had a rank 12 or lower, and in every single case they were on the team with 3-4 players vs a full 5 on the other side. How do you think these players feel when they see people leaving constantly knowing they’re being avoided by everyone? What can be done to reduce or eliminate these situations where these new players are seen as HIV carriers dripping blood all over the place?

It’s true – I am a PvP noob, and I am well aware that I would be a hindrance to my team which is why I chose to play hotfix since winning was supposedly not something that mattered too much. I do like to win occasionally but I also like to try my hand against other classes to learn how to counter them in a casual environment where I won’t ruin someone’s standings.

But the more I have played the more I have felt that I just shouldn’t bother playing. There’s always someone raging that their teammates are stupid or that they couldn’t believe the team failed after all they did for them and it’s so common now I am starting to think it’s not worth the effort anymore.

Just spitballing, what if when u commit to spectate u may no longer join that match?

I don’t often browse these forums, but I do play a lot of hotjoin pvp.
Reasons being I prefer a quick pvp game for when I feel like it and being able to leave when I have to.

It is clear to me, and whoever spends a lot of time in hotjoin however, that the current hotjoin mode is broken ever since they introduced spectator mode.
It was fine before that.

I don’t really care if you fix it by removing spectator mode, adding a timer to people joining spectator before they can rejoin a team or by improving the autobalance system.

Just do something. If the solution receives bad feedback, reverse it. It can’t get any worse than it is now.

edit: If it’s not clear why it’s bad:
Empty slots don’t get filled instantly, a 4v3 will have the person of the losing team join spectator mode, force autobalance and join the winning team.
This is ok if you are on the winning team to begin with, since you’ll get a win bonus + volunteer bonus in the end.
People do this to get monthly wins, more glory, etc…
It’s bad because losing teams get worse (who wants to try to win after fighting so hard for the winning team and getting switched to a 4v3 instead of a 3v3) and the person forcing autobalance gets rewarded for playing badly at the start of the match.
People stop playing and look for opportunities to join the winning team instead of just quitting and allowing a proper autobalance.

Other often proposed more crazy solutions include removing the win bonus to glory and rewarding only personal score in hotjoin, remove the conquest mode from hotjoin and replace it with a simpler game-mode like CTF, …

Spectator mode itself got no problem. New rank (0-15rank) players should be segregated from veteran players as they are causing the problem you are highlighting.

yLoon.5289:

Spectator mode itself got no problem. New rank (0-15rank) players should be segregated from veteran players as they are causing the problem you are highlighting.

Played Chivalry: Medieval Warfare recently, they have those servers were you can’t enter if you’re higher than rank 15. Loved being able to learn the game without experienced people around to kick my kitten .

Clip.6845:

yLoon.5289:

Spectator mode itself got no problem. New rank (0-15rank) players should be segregated from veteran players as they are causing the problem you are highlighting.

Played Chivalry: Medieval Warfare recently, they have those servers were you can’t enter if you’re higher than rank 15. Loved being able to learn the game without experienced people around to kick my kitten .

perhaps some of them official hotjoin servers can be made to restrict certain ranks only?

for example,

x10 unrestricted (all ranks may enter)
x10 rank 1 – 20
x10 rank 21 – 40
x10 rank 41 – 60
x10 rank 61 – 80

I would personally love to have the following:

• Hotjoin (8v8 and 5v5, no choosing sides, side is randomly chosen or auto balanced and you cannot switch teams other than being autobalanced over). Maybe have some servers be under rank 30 only?
• Casual Queue (q up with 1-3 person group, you would play this instead of hotjoining with friends, it does use MMR but it’s hidden, no rank limitations)
• Rated Solo Q (rank 30 and up)
• Rated Team Q (rank 30 and up)

I think leaving hot joins the way it is, but adding the features suggested by OP as well as an unranked queue would solve most of the problems and leave hot joins as a screw around / teaching / casual / dueling / scheduled matches type area similar to that of servers for tf2 and chivalry.

Part of the problem right now tho is to many ppl take hot joined too serious.

but hotjoin
less experienced 4 vs 5 experienced

not fun
there are people here who still thinks its fun to be on the team with 5 experienced stomping the team of 4 who are less experienced.

looks at Yasha

The option to spectate in hot joins should not be removed. I’ve been playing a ton of hot joins recently, so I understand why there’s a problem. However, I’d like to point out that this isn’t a problem caused by anet, so much as players deliberately making the choice to create a bad community.

One of the biggest problems isn’t spectating mode, its that you can view player’s ranks. I can’t even list off the amount of times I’ve just sat there to watch how many players ranked 40+ would only join one side, while the other side (losing side) is pretty much composted of players ranked 20 and under. Mind you, many players would make this decision before points in the game would even start to rise. I’m not sure if it’s more pathetic that these veterans only seem to want to play against rabbits, or annoying to attempt to fight on a team that doesn’t know what to do. Regardless, seeing ranks should really be removed.

I feel as though a good solution to this, as listed above, would be to have certain servers that only allow specific ranks. For example, when a new player joins heart of the mists for the first time, they’d get a prompt that might suggest a series of public servers. These specific servers would only allow players that are, say, ranked 10 and under. They’d still be allowed to play in other servers of course, but this would give them a chance to learn the game among players of similar skill or knowledge level. The same could be done with higher ranks as well, for those who might prefer a more competitive level without the queue times or restrictions of tournaments.

As far as losing teams being outnumbered goes, I’m not sure how one would fix that. I’d suggest a different type of auto-balance, that would kick a random player off the team into spectator mode if their team has more numbers for a given amount of time. They’d still receive as much exp as they normally would for whatever given time they spent in the match. This might discourage people from stacking on teams, but I still find that this could probably be easily abused and is by far from an easy solution.

But guys, I think we need to remember that not everyone sitting in spectator mode is there to join the winning team. Personally, I enjoy going there just to watch some friends of mine fight and such. And doing so wouldn’t be nearly as fun if it wasn’t live

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?

People are using it to rack up tons of kill points and complete their dailies. I would say 9/10 matches going on at any moment are lopsided and imbalanced due to people manipulating spectator mode. After coming back to the game I was amazed at how awful the matches had become… and they were not that great before. It is definitely not selling people on pvp. If you can work out in the first minute wheich side is stronger then imbalance it, you will end up with full rewards, which is what people are doing.

Clip.6845:

yLoon.5289:

Spectator mode itself got no problem. New rank (0-15rank) players should be segregated from veteran players as they are causing the problem you are highlighting.

Played Chivalry: Medieval Warfare recently, they have those servers were you can’t enter if you’re higher than rank 15. Loved being able to learn the game without experienced people around to kick my kitten .

I would propose New Rank player can join Veteran’s Players Game, but only restricted to Spectator Mode.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

but hotjoin
less experienced 4 vs 5 experienced

not fun
there are people here who still thinks its fun to be on the team with 5 experienced stomping the team of 4 who are less experienced.

looks at Yasha

I want randomized teams and a system that prevents players from using spectate to force auto balance so that the current exploiting by players bent on cheating to win like yourself can’t occur.

Yasha.5963:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

but hotjoin
less experienced 4 vs 5 experienced

not fun
there are people here who still thinks its fun to be on the team with 5 experienced stomping the team of 4 who are less experienced.

looks at Yasha

I want randomized teams and a system that prevents players from using spectate to force auto balance so that the current exploiting by players bent on cheating to win like yourself can’t occur.

come on, Yasha, just admit it, you simply enjoy being on the team of 5 steam rolling the other team of 4.

everything you have proposed does nothing to solve the 5 vs 4 issue in hotjoin.

and please take back your words, i am bent on making the match balanced.

everytime when i enter spectator mode to force auto balance so that the losing team can get one more player, i join back the losing team. the points are often 200+ away and in the end, the losing team still loses, but at least the teams may be 5 vs 5 in the end, and the scores difference may not be that big.

i am not like you, Yasha, who enjoys being in the “superior” team, steam rolling the team with lesser players.

just admit it already Yasha, that’s all what you want from this anyway.

randomized team will not guarantee the following:
- experienced team vs inexperienced team
- 5 vs 4

shuffling the players into teams based on their experience is a better option.
pure randomize will not do.

I don’t care what the reasons are, the current spectator mode is very broken. Just spent 20 min looking for one balanced game and couldn’t find one. Every single game someone was outnumbered and being destroyed by another team. Use your own metrics Anet. I am sure you will see that 90% or more of games are very lopsided and not much fun.

As a customer, and yeah I paid as much for my box as the guys ranked highly, I think I should be able to pop in and grab some quick pvp and have it be a bit fun. I don’t much care if I win… I just want some good games. Currently it sucks.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Yasha.5963:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

but hotjoin
less experienced 4 vs 5 experienced

not fun
there are people here who still thinks its fun to be on the team with 5 experienced stomping the team of 4 who are less experienced.

looks at Yasha

I want randomized teams and a system that prevents players from using spectate to force auto balance so that the current exploiting by players bent on cheating to win like yourself can’t occur.

come on, Yasha, just admit it, you simply enjoy being on the team of 5 steam rolling the other team of 4.

everything you have proposed does nothing to solve the 5 vs 4 issue in hotjoin.

and please take back your words, i am bent on making the match balanced.

everytime when i enter spectator mode to force auto balance so that the losing team can get one more player, i join back the losing team. the points are often 200+ away and in the end, the losing team still loses, but at least the teams may be 5 vs 5 in the end, and the scores difference may not be that big.

i am not like you, Yasha, who enjoys being in the “superior” team, steam rolling the team with lesser players.

just admit it already Yasha, that’s all what you want from this anyway.

randomized team will not guarantee the following:
- experienced team vs inexperienced team
- 5 vs 4

shuffling the players into teams based on their experience is a better option.
pure randomize will not do.

Try using your brain, if the teams are randomised and you can’t force autobalance to team swap you cannot choose to be on the “winning” side. The system as it is now lets me or anyone else manipulate the game to be on the winning or superior side, which is why it needs to be changed.