Guild Wars 2

If you don’t wanna read the story just go to the TL: DR

So there I was, working hard with my team. We were capping points left and right easily since the entire opposing team decided they wanted to roam instead of bother with points. They spent a majority of their time around the center of the map by the orb, trying to stop us from getting it, despite 1-2 players just going around capping everything. This goes on and we get about 300 points to their 150, and unsurprisingly, someone drops from the match. I get autobalanced over, check teams again and notice that the person who dropped took my place. A little peeved, I go over and plan to kill them good for being a kitten but to my surprise they aren’t even out of the base. They’re just standing there. By this point, teams are almost full and my former team, being outnumbered is now stuck at about 450 points.

Long story short, my former team loses and I start asking the guy that switched wth he was doing. Apparently he took it upon himself to “balance” the teams for us and complained that we were zerging, so it was his responsibility to make it “fair”. This ofc meant forcing a player off their original team and then essentially giving them a permanent -1 player. He just sat up in the base, shouting advice to his original team and telling them things like where stealthed players were headed, or if someone was going for a point.

TLDR

Seriously Anet, make it so if people leave a match, they can’t rejoin that same match. There is no reason for them to need to do that and the sole purpose is to force an autobalance so they can get on the winning team or screw over the team that was beating them.

I admit I’ve done something like this, but only after failing to fix the team balance several times and being stuck on the losing end of a perpetual 4v5.

After you’ve spent four or five games in a row losing because people are blatantly exploiting the team swap mechanic you start to get frustrated. After doing nothing but forcing an auto balance and re-joining the losing side to try and get both sides even only for people to leave the losing side and join the winning team again you start feeling angry at how completely hopeless it is.

So the only option available ended up being to join the winning side and just not fight so it’d be a 4v4. Even that is futile though, because they’ll just all switch to the losing team the moment it’s about to catch up in score and still win via a 5v4.

Anet NEEDS to fix this. I have no idea why they’ve chosen to not address this issue that is killing hotjoin. Just because a game mode isn’t rated doesn’t mean it should be a cesspool filled with exploiters and gold farmers who can’t win without a numbers advantage.

Play spvp. Hotjoin is meant for ppl waiting in queue.

i’ve tried auto balancing the team togive the losing side the player advantage, but there is always a bunch of exploiters waiting to join the winning team…
the most you can do is force a 4v5… still with the losing team at a handicap.

seriously Anet, fix this exploit already…

Sube Dai.8496:

Play spvp. Hotjoin is meant for ppl waiting in queue.

That isn’t really a solution because tournies suffer their own annoyances that have yet to be resolved. Being autobalanced by team hoppers only to get into a tPvP match with 4v5 and getting smashed there doesn’t sound appealing.

Necrotize.2974:

So there I was, working hard with my team.

There is no team in hotjoin.

Its freakin 2 years man, l2p that hotjoin = free for all, and join us in tpvp. Plauers who want to win are always welcome

i like it when i get transfer to a losing team after i help the other team to win. seriously thats when u can see who are descent players who carries others and those who just bandwagon to the winning team. i cant even count how many times i turn a losing team to start winning. good feeling even if its hotjoint and im just waiting for my soloQ to pop.

Rename hotjoin to practice mode so people stop being confused about what it is. problem solved.

Chesire.9043:

Sube Dai.8496:

Play spvp. Hotjoin is meant for ppl waiting in queue.

That isn’t really a solution because tournies suffer their own annoyances that have yet to be resolved. Being autobalanced by team hoppers only to get into a tPvP match with 4v5 and getting smashed there doesn’t sound appealing.

go into tpvp with a full group then…

All your comments don’t change the fact that its broken like hell.

Practice or not, you all demand new players to play hotjoin instead of spvp. But all that hotjoin can offer is imbalance in each and every way.

If it is competitive, and in the game it is worthy of addressing. However by virtue hotjoin doesn’t get the QoL of standard models, and there is no reason it should not have been included my conclusion is that hotjoin players are valueless and not worthy of feature patch upgrades or fixes.

but but.. those extra 5 silver..

tbh, scaling down hotjoin to 5 players was a bad idea because players weakness comes to show quicker and players will get called out sooner.. (in hotjoin.. ikr)
Having 8 players per team in hotjoin makes life easier for the beginners and less stressful

“Arguing in hotjoin is like winning the special olympics”

Suggestion:

Promotion system

Hotjoin:
Beginner: 8ppl
Standard: 5ppl

SoloQ:
Beginner: 5ppl (Promotion to advanced after reaching a certain w/l ratio)
Advanced: 5ppl ~rated

TeamQ:
Beginner: 5ppl with promotion to advanced when reaching a certain threshold~unrated
Advanced: 5ppl ~rated

cheers

Lol carrying in hot join. Some people are so try hards

Op, I’ve done that.

The Pvp tracks require 200 wins and an autobalance is a win. So when you are outnumbered, drop to spectate and autobalance over to the winning team. And if you have a chance to volunteer, do so: automatic win and extra glory.

At least OP got his extra glory from auto balancing (unless he didn’t volunteer, then looool).

Those guys weren’t screwing around fighting at the orb because they were noobs, they were screwing around fighting at the orb because 4v5 is stupid and at least fighting at the orb is fun and passes the time. The team with the numbers is always going to win and hot join games always have unbalanced numbers, It’s dumb.

OP is ready to go to solo Q.

Zord.6130:

Lol carrying in hot join. Some people are so try hards

did not know that trying to win is something to look down on. thanks for the enlightenment.

I’m not sure why people go back into Spectate when they get autobalanced over, but I suspect it’s because they don’t realise that if you get autobalanced, you get the winner’s bonus anyway, even if you didn’t volunteer. I didn’t know that for quite a while after I started PvPing either.

In fact, in my matches, whenever I see the Volunteer option pop up, I always grab it. It means I can just yolo the remainder of the match and as long as the match went to 8.5 mins remaining, I’ll get the maximum reward anyway.

I didn’t see this post and responded to another one about hotjoin.

I 100% agree with OP. I know it’s only hotjoin, people will come and go, people won’t try that hard to win, etc. But having people leave and rejoin on the winning side is really lame, plain and simple.

One should also remember even though hotjoin is hotjoin, you still get more rewards for being on the winning team. So people who are doing this (spectating, swapping) are profiting from it, it isn’t like a neutral rage choice.

If you spectate to force an autobalance you should have a cooldown on being able tp rejoin the game. New player experiences spvp first through hotjoin, so saying “just play tpvp” isn’t exactly the answer, plus tpvp queues are so long at some times of day! If you want to grow the tpvp community, must make hotjoin somewhat enjoyable first!

Remove hot join and make it into un-ranked solo queue. That will teach newcomers way more than any hot join match ever has done..

its just so sad that hotjoin has just been made worse and worse.
back near release it was so much fun.

8v8: REMOVED
8v8 was amazingly fun and every match was better balanced since you’d generally get atleast 3 people on each team who knew what to do.

Skyhammer: ADDED
the sheer hate that this map receives, i just can’t understand why it still exists…
or at the very least why its still in rotation,make it like courtyard, custom only.

spectator/team select exploit: ADDED
by far the worst change to date, this has ruined all form of balance, and as such has ruined all form of fun, there is nothing fun about a onesided pointless match, no matter which team you’re on.

bring back 8v8 hotjoin, disable/fix spectator+team select.
make hotjoin fun again!

You forgot the Removal of Capricorn, which was at least another map to play around with.

There’s enough rage in hotjoin, son’t make people join solo-q hatefests.

Hotjoin isn’t actual PVP. It’s for testing builds, dueling, and gameplay mechanics.

Play solo or team. No genuine pvp arena would allow you to reroll to the winning side if you did bad the whole match.

The suggested changes about rejoin cooldown are warranted though. I would even go so far as to say that dropping from a team and rejoining should stick you with a stack of dishonored.

It’s just hard to take hotjoin seriously as an actual pvp scene that isnt just duel/practice.

Gonna argue this point ‘not actual pvp’ isn’t right.

It’s for enjoyment, with some rewards on the side.

Side hoppers are Oh-so-serious types that should be forced into solo-q with their ilk, unfortunately that’s not really viable.

Windsagio.1340:

Gonna argue this point ‘not actual pvp’ isn’t right.

It’s for enjoyment, with some rewards on the side.

Side hoppers are Oh-so-serious types that should be forced into solo-q with their ilk, unfortunately that’s not really viable.

I’ll concede that. Perhaps my conception of pvp differs from yours.

hotjoin -is- pvp, it’s just too forgiving to people that value winning over having fun.

One time midgame we got a player in team that just stood there near enemy (they didnt fight) and enemy was killing our landlord or how it called… =/
I reported him for scam because I didnt know what else to do.

Ya, I mean I’m not saying they need to rehaul autobalance or try to fix 4v5s in hotjoin. I also agree with those who say it is practise mode.

However, one friend of mine who I started to get into spvp found hotjoin really discouraging because of the team swapping, and felt like he never got the feel of a real game, it never felt rewarding to win, etc. I obviously couldn’t take him straight to tpvp or even solo queue. Hotjoin IS pvp for new players, plain and simple, and you wouldn’t want them going straight into tourney pvp anyway.

If they just made spectating then rejoining not possible, that would be great.

I do enjoy swapping to the losing side to come up top at the end of the match knowing you scored about 750 points total in one match ^^

Chesire.9043:

Sube Dai.8496:

Play spvp. Hotjoin is meant for ppl waiting in queue.

That isn’t really a solution because tournies suffer their own annoyances that have yet to be resolved. Being autobalanced by team hoppers only to get into a tPvP match with 4v5 and getting smashed there doesn’t sound appealing.

So so true.

Also hot join is the entire reason I came to this game – it promised a no grind needed, fast-paced pvp environment. One where there was the potential to meet other players based on a compatible play-style without worrying about deal breaking gear-checks all the time.

It was great for a while – I definitely developed friendships and rivalries with others I saw often and it was really really fun. I played almost every day for an hour or more.

I haven’t touched GW2 for over 2 weeks at this point because it is not fun at all anymore.

I held on for quite a while. I would visualize a great match in my head and log on only to find the nothing had grown even larger.

Godspeed GW2 pvp devs.