Guild Wars 2

^ how about you use yours?

due to randomize and not shuffling based on experienced, players on the lesser team will leave anyway, causing teams to be not balanced.

5 vs 4 will still occur.

randomizing alone will not fix the problem.

I had quite a few balanced matches of hotjoin today, score 500-400-ish. (Got autobalanced in almost all games though, but they filled up afterwards.)

The main problem to me seems to be that servers don’t fill up fast enough to a full 5v5.
Part of the problem of spectator mode is you can’t see how many people are playing from watching the server list.

People see “10/20” and they won’t join because they assume it’s full. But in reality there’s 3 people in spectator mode waiting to join the winning team or just being AFK.

Yasha.5963:

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.

Spectate/autobalance is created when games are 5v4 or 4v3. Games are 5v4 or 4v3 because of people leaving. Guess where that bigger problem of imbalance comes from? You clearly have a brain, as you would be a massive hypocrite not to after the insult to Deimos.

Unless you come up with a proposal to prevent people from leaving hotjoin (crappier Solo Queue anyone?), or some way to keep the score balanced so someone will come in and stay as the last spot in the 5v4, once a match becomes 5v4 people will keep leaving at an equal or faster rate than people entering.

Sorry but your ideas are too shallow and restrictive. Until you accept that 5v4 is a problem, spectate/autobalance doesn’t create those 5v4s, and spectate/autobalance doesn’t happen until 5v4, any proposal submitted by you will just further imbalance matches.

How can you make staying in the match with a rank 9 player more favorable than trying to find another match?

Its really simple.
If you join a game, you have an option to play or spectate.
You dont have a choice of what team you will be on, you dont have a choice to join a team if you enter spectate. You cannot rejoin a server until the match is over.
Something more radical: autobalance 4v5’s so that the losing side has more people.

Roe.3679:

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.

I’ve actually mentioned this method before, probably a good idea.

When it comes to spectator mode I like to spectate sometimes, I think the way to fix the abuse of that system is to make it so once you choose a team, you cannot go back into spectator mode. You must either leave the match or stay on that team once you choose a team.

DaveGan.8065:

Yasha.5963:

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.

Spectate/autobalance is created when games are 5v4 or 4v3. Games are 5v4 or 4v3 because of people leaving. Guess where that bigger problem of imbalance comes from? You clearly have a brain, as you would be a massive hypocrite not to after the insult to Deimos.

Unless you come up with a proposal to prevent people from leaving hotjoin (crappier Solo Queue anyone?), or some way to keep the score balanced so someone will come in and stay as the last spot in the 5v4, once a match becomes 5v4 people will keep leaving at an equal or faster rate than people entering.

Sorry but your ideas are too shallow and restrictive. Until you accept that 5v4 is a problem, spectate/autobalance doesn’t create those 5v4s, and spectate/autobalance doesn’t happen until 5v4, any proposal submitted by you will just further imbalance matches.

How can you make staying in the match with a rank 9 player more favorable than trying to find another match?

I believe the biggest culprit for creating 4v5 games are AFK spectators preventing anybody from getting directed to the game to fill the last spot.

They need to account for this or start reducing the number of active servers and making players wait for an open spot

ens.9854:

I believe the biggest culprit for creating 4v5 games are AFK spectators preventing anybody from getting directed to the game to fill the last spot.

They need to account for this or start reducing the number of active servers and making players wait for an open spot

I’m starting to think now that most players aren’t entering through “Play Now” but simply picking a server with less than 10 players inside.

Unfortunately that makes this issue considerably harder to solve.

It’s worth mention that ppl usually also check ranks of players on each team before joining in and then choose teams with more high ranked players on it, this is why many matches go off the rails from the start and then we have all this “rage quit/forcing autobalancing” kittenbaggery going on full scale. You often can see how spectators are waiting in the background and spamming join button for the team with more high ranked players on it, waiting for some clueless soul to join the “losers” team and thus open up the joining option for the desired team. It happens all the time, if you go in hot join and start just pressing Play Now it most likely will take you a couple of minutes before you find more or less balanced match, while the majority of them displaying scores like 400-30 etc. This is as gayest as it gets, the current iteration of hot join is bad for the game and unhealthy for the community, it should not exist in it’s current form. As i see it, perfect solution would be an unranked soloq.

I played hotjoin for about 3 hours the other day. A handful of those games were close matches and the rest landslides victories or losses. I ALWAYS hit join random and I still had a blast… yet it was the few close matches that were really enjoyable and kept me coming back. The majority of the games were 5v4 4v3 with A LOT of team swap shenanigans. I know that hotjoin is not meant to be competitive but not all players want to or are ready for soloq. People are also less fun to play with in soloq…

I like a lot of the ideas presented here and I knowppl working at anet are more qualified to solve this than I. It may seem trivial to competitive players but hotjoin is the only pvp a lot of players ever experience. Dont we deserve a chance at equal teams too?

I know anet is focused on pushing gw2 into the Esports realm but its disheartening to see team stacking and game leaving problems go on for so long. GW1 had a dishonor mechanic… why the step backwards?

sendaf.8375:

I know anet is focused on pushing gw2 into the Esports realm but its disheartening to see team stacking and game leaving problems go on for so long. GW1 had a dishonor mechanic… why the step backwards?

In my opinion, hotjoin is something anet should have the closest eyes on in the pvp side of the game, because it ushers in the new players into the game.

One of the biggest problems with upper-level gaming in gw2 is the lack of players willing to put in the effort to learn the game. You see teams break up because of this. They seriously fight, day-in day-out, the same people every match. That can get rather stale. If this doesn’t occur, then it usually means they play against a team with significantly less experience than they have. This creates landslide games which are no fun for anyone.

If they have a close eye on making hotjoin a solid, stable place for new players to learn the game, then there is at least a better chance of them staying and motivating them to learn the game rather than just saying, “this is stupid” and giving up.

My first thoughts about this game was that it was a straight up clusterkitten. Once you practice a bit though, and learn the basic mechanics of the game, this becomes significantly less true as you learn to spot certain things.

In its current iteration, I’m almost sure new players are still getting that clusterkitten feeling about the pvp in this game – which isn’t a good thing. It needs to be more structured, in my opinion.

I still think they should bring back rewards based on what the player actually did in the match. NOT based on Personal Score, based on one’s actual actions.

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 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 if they are skilled players and know they can do a lot even on their own.

Finally, if you get Autobalanced, you get DOUBLE the winning team’s reward. (This bonus disappears if you enter Spectator mode or swap back to the other team.) That should pretty much negate all desire to want to team swap back even if the losing team is getting thrashed.

Zaxares.5419:

-snip-.

Your suggestion that players should get more points based on what they did would bring the game a step backward and back into the era where points were based off individual score. Under your suggestions, 5 people could cap the same point and get rewarded for it. This is NOT what we want. The idea of Anet to make the game based off win/loss broke this “zerg” mentality up.

The problems in hotjoin (not an exhaustive list) is thus:
1. The winning team gets a substantial amount of points for winning (500) compared to losing (200).
2. There is no incentive to join a losing team in the middle of a match.

Currently as we all seem to agree on is that a match will start with 2 players one on each side. One of the players is rank 80, the other is rank below 20. Another player in spectator (maybe say rank 60) sees this and joins the rank 80’s team creating a 2v1. Now, no one else will want to join the rank 20 team because there is a decent chance of losing and the match already is lopsided in that regard. If someone does join the rank 20 then another player in spectator will join the rank 80 and 60’s team, thus causing an imbalance of 2v3.

I personally like DaveGan’s idea of changing the Win/loss points to something closer to 400/300 as opposed to the current 500/200. This means winning is less important and so people may be less inclined to join the rank 20’s team. Another solution may be to award players who join the losing team bonus points for how many points they help to close up the deficit.

Now, with regard to spectator mode as an imbalance tool:
As mentioned by other users, a stopgap measure to change team stacking would be to make it so that other people can’t see ranks in spectate. While I think this should be implemented, I also think it is a stopgap change. After a few rounds, players will begin to realize who they feel is better and will want to team up with those players again which again leads to team stacking. Changing spectator mode so you can’t see ranks will not remove this issue of heavy team stacking.

Another suggestion I have is that players kitten-enter spectate mode after a match has started should not be able to get any points even if they rejoin. This could help prevent players who try to use autobalance to manipulate wins for points i.e Player 1 goes into spectator to force imbalance, this forces a player from the winning team to be autobalanced to the losing team, Player 1 then joins the winning team to ride for free win points. Re-entering spectator mode should mean you don’t get any points for the game, this would at least mean that it is better to lose to get some points rather then enter spectator and get nothing at the end.

Ultimately though, suggestions to change spectator mode are stopgap solutions. Ideally it would be better to change the team stack mentality at its roots by tackling things like the imbalances in win/loss point ratios.

On a concluding note, it would be a wise decision for anet to invest some time in making hotjoin a more desirable place to play. Hotjoin is likely the first pvp a new player will get. Therefore, for the game to grow Hotjoin is essential in attempting to hook a new player into pvp and get them invested enough to learn new strategies, attribute setups etc (which spectator mode is for).

Please, don’t say new players should just play Solo-queue as there were enough threads whining about imbalanced ranks a while ago.

TLDR:
We should not make points based off individual actions otherwise we will get the old zerg problems where 5 people would try to cap 1 point and not try to win.
Stopgap measures to fix spectator mode would be to hide rank and make re-entering spectator mode disqualify you from earning points.
Ultimately we need to change the problems at the root level which encourages people to team stack and manipulate spectator.

How about this.

Remove hot join in general.

more people playing team q, solo q & next game mode to come out

which means more accurate match making & faster que times

there will b more noobs in soloq so u wont have to worry about getting steamrolled,

and more players so almost instant ques.

then add spectate to top rated play, where it actually matters.

dday.9532:

How about this.

Remove hot join in general.

there will b more noobs in soloq so u wont have to worry about getting steamrolled,

and more players so almost instant ques.

then add spectate to top rated play, where it actually matters.

No… Then that opens the door to a whole new problem. People join SoloQ and see their team is full of “noobs” and say well I have no chance here and I don’t want to waste 8 minutes carrying a team… and they leave. Good thing the que line is down now; so that player can just keep joining soloQ until he gets in a team full of players he wants.

Hot join is working as intended, the problem is team stacking which is enabled by a broken spectate mode.

IsilZha.3608:

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.

I had someone that sat at the spawn point when they were losing because they still got points for it. He specifically even said that this was the only game that he could PvP and get rewarded for doing nothing – literally. Time shouldn’t be a factor (ranked or not); if it is, should be a very small portion of “participation” (gold star). I can run around on a crap team and still score at least 100 points in hotjoin without any issues, so people that complain need to get off their butts and just play the kitten game.

Aomine.5012:

I’m pretty sure many people have noticed.
The current Hot-join community are mostly noobs sit at spectate mode, waiting for someone to join the losing team, then join the winning team to create constant outnumber advantage (5 v 4, 4 v 3, etc)

Seriously though, hot-join should go back to what it used to be, people join and assigned to random team (or automatically assigned to losing team) and make people actually PLAY the game instead of being carried all his life.

Spectate mode also serves NO PURPOSE in Hot-join because it makes you learn nothing, promoting bad game-play style, and makes you watch unfair fight. It also has no replay function like back in GW1, that you can actually observe your own action to improve your play-style.

Spectate mode is not needed in hot-join whatsoever.
It should be added in Solo Q or Team Q instead.
It should also add record and replay option, so people can actually OBSERVE AND LEARN the game instead of abusing it in hot-join for free-ride wins.

This is the difference between Tournament and Non-Tournament games
It was all intended to function as such

I do agree however, that team matches should be able to be viewed
If not viewed by PUGs, you should be able to allow guildies to view your matches
This would be a great way to teach new members and keep them up to speed

sendaf.8375:

dday.9532:

How about this.

Remove hot join in general.

there will b more noobs in soloq so u wont have to worry about getting steamrolled,

and more players so almost instant ques.

then add spectate to top rated play, where it actually matters.

No… Then that opens the door to a whole new problem. People join SoloQ and see their team is full of “noobs” and say well I have no chance here and I don’t want to waste 8 minutes carrying a team… and they leave. Good thing the que line is down now; so that player can just keep joining soloQ until he gets in a team full of players he wants.

Hot join is working as intended, the problem is team stacking which is enabled by a broken spectate mode.

more people queuing up = more accurate matchmaking
which means newbies will be placed with each other rather than more skilled players

and if people leave then they get dishonorable
which should be harsher (one stack should give like an hour or 30 min of no play)
but thats an argument for a different forum

Any chance we can see some spells-traits (1-2) restrictions for ppl that are 40+ rank and have completed their Class Achivement (250 wins), in hotjoins ?
Every 10 rank an adiotional spells or trait is restricted ?

If the community insist that the 5v5 is the apropriate format = fine .
But forcing 1v1 for new players = bad

If ppl want to test their character they can buy a Custom Arena (the community said the same about buying a custom arena , if other ppl want 8v8)

And the answer to our problem is not Unranked format .
Even if there is a Matchmaking system in the Unranked que , and the population is small , then ’’Top’’ Players will still get matched up with ’’Lower’’ .

Just had another bad auto balance session. I was on the winning team but then auto-balanced to the losing team where I stayed to the end. Every few seconds auto balance would kick in as someone left our team which made the match sorta even at 4v4…but this only lasted a split second as the other team miraculously found a fifth player. Every time. While we didn’t. I’m hoping that by bumping this up, the issue won’t be forgotten.

Reiven.2543:

Your suggestion that players should get more points based on what they did would bring the game a step backward and back into the era where points were based off individual score. Under your suggestions, 5 people could cap the same point and get rewarded for it. This is NOT what we want. The idea of Anet to make the game based off win/loss broke this “zerg” mentality up.

Is that really so bad though? As many other people keep bringing up, “it’s only hotjoin”. It’s meant to be the place for casual PvP’s or newbies to get their feet wet where having fun is more important than winning. Solo Queue and Team Queue is where it’s more about winning, and strategies there alter to match. Hotjoin should be the place where you have multiple-man caps and everybody getting into a 10-man brawl at the orb. (There’s a reason why Courtyard never shows up in the ranked PvP modes, for example, and yet every single time I see Courtyard in a custom arena rotation, it almost always seems to be full.)

Zaxares.5419:

Reiven.2543:

Your suggestion that players should get more points based on what they did would bring the game a step backward and back into the era where points were based off individual score. Under your suggestions, 5 people could cap the same point and get rewarded for it. This is NOT what we want. The idea of Anet to make the game based off win/loss broke this “zerg” mentality up.

Is that really so bad though? As many other people keep bringing up, “it’s only hotjoin”. It’s meant to be the place for casual PvP’s or newbies to get their feet wet where having fun is more important than winning. Solo Queue and Team Queue is where it’s more about winning, and strategies there alter to match. Hotjoin should be the place where you have multiple-man caps and everybody getting into a 10-man brawl at the orb. (There’s a reason why Courtyard never shows up in the ranked PvP modes, for example, and yet every single time I see Courtyard in a custom arena rotation, it almost always seems to be full.)

Yes, it is. It would create an even more toxic environment where the more experienced players get even more frustrated as newer and newer players are taught increasingly more bad habits.

If winning isn’t so important in hotjoin, and you want a completely casual atmosphere, the first thing to do is address the 500-200 reward cap to reflect this. Change it to 400-300, 300-200, or hell make it a 200 point participation reward (possibly with a 1500 point participation bonus after 5 daily matches).

It’s one thing to make hotjoin indifferent to bad tactics (multi-capping/zerging/flipping points), but quite another to actually encourage it.

dday.9532:

How about this.

Remove hot join in general.

more people playing team q, solo q & next game mode to come out

if you want my unload thief, conjure weapons ele and sniper longbow warrior on your team then sure, but don’t you even think about moaning that i’m not using competitive “meta” builds or that my ranger is off point.

these builds are fun to play in hotjoin where you can have a bit of fun without rank being on the line (and no these builds are not useless, they’re just not cookie cutting meta clones)

also until suckhammer is removed from rotation i will NEVER play soloQ.

removing spvp is not an option
fixing it is.

edit to the people thinking its about winning or losing, nope.
its about the experience, hotjoin used to be so much fun back when it was 8v8 with fixed teams, but these landslide matches with team selecting/swapping exploiters ruining every game ARE NOT fun.
we want the fun back, its not about the match result.

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 had games where people were in it from the beginning but used the spectate mode to play “musical chairs” for a spot on the winning team throughout the match. It was horrible…

I do find that spectating and joining back should be ok, but once a match starts, you should not be able to switch teams.

EDIT: i think its more of an issue with auto-balance + spectate than just spectate itself