Guild Wars 2

I recently decided it was time to spec a new class out and jump into some hotjoins and try it out. It’s been horrid.

In the last few days playing between 6 to 10 games I’ve had ONE game where it could have gone either way in a 4vs5. The rest end up 5 Vs 2, 3 or, if you’re lucky 4 people, plus teamstacked. Not infrequently one of the losing team stays at spawn and waits for the timer for the purposes of getting their three daily maps.

You can’t learn a new class if you’re being ganked by 2 to 5 players at spawn.

I’m sure it’s been raised before but could ArenaNet consider one or more of the following:

- Remove playing 3 rounds from the daily rotation so people don’t just idle for the hell of it. This incentive to pvp is no longer required now that we have reward tracks.

- Once a player has joined the game – if they enter spectate then have them forfeit ALL bonus glory rewards at the end of the match.

- If you enter spectate after joining a team have the player forfeit reward track progress for the match.

True, there may be a slight inconvenience to players in the above, but those of us who care about PVP surely would prefer this? It removes all the benefits of team stacking (unless you’re absolutely adamant that you can’t be on the losing team even if you lose your rewards – fair game to you if that’s your preference!)

I had also considered a cooldown timer on being able to re-join, but that feels more intrusive to the game than the above suggestions.
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Spectate is for:

1. Watching and learning from other players
2. Being away for an extended period of time and allowing others to fill your spot

It is NOT for auto-balancing so you can join the winning team.

I’d welcome thoughts or other ideas from anyone out there!

Muffinpie <3

I believe the biggest problem is, nobody takes hot join seriously anymore. People really only use it to get a few guaranteed wins (by abusing spectate).

Exactly Pamat! So if we fix what’s broken then we start back on a path toward greatness!

tbh I had no idea how bad hotjoins had gotten until I started up this week. I pity anyone trying to jump into the current games without abusing the system.

no no no you are doing it wrong.

at the early phase of each hotjoin match, you need to actively enter spectator mode to force auto balance yourself to make sure your team is not disadvantaged.

4 vs 5 ?
3 vs 4 ?

no problem.
force auto balance.
suddenly your team has more players.

spectator mode + auto balance is there so you can use it to force auto balance yourself for your team who is losing in points and also having less one player to get some help.

for example, outnumbered
1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, 4 vs 5

and they have more points than your team, leading by 50 – 100 points

force an auto balance, join back your team, now fight for your team.

be aware of the score board though.
some idiots from your team may actually transfer to the other team.

continue until the players stop moving around.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

no no no you are doing it wrong.

at the early phase of each hotjoin match, you need to actively enter spectator mode to force auto balance yourself to make sure your team is not disadvantaged.

4 vs 5 ?
3 vs 4 ?

no problem.
force auto balance.
suddenly your team has more players.

spectator mode + auto balance is there so you can use it to force auto balance yourself for your team who is losing in points and also having less one player to get some help.

for example, outnumbered
1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, 4 vs 5

and they have more points than your team, leading by 50 – 100 points

force an auto balance, join back your team, now fight for your team.

be aware of the score board though.
some idiots from your team may actually transfer to the other team.

continue until the players stop moving around.

You are correct that abusing spectate mode and team swapping is now just as important in hotjoin as actually playing the game.

well,

Yasha,

i would not call it abusing though but as a matter of fact, fully utilizing it as it is very obviously working as intended.

the main reason why matches start off not balanced is because some players:
- want a win, for extra 5 silvers
- want a win, for +1 monthly progress
- want a win, for faster progress rewards
- want a win, etc

and so they let the matches start off with one side having one more player, and after that they try their best to join the “winning” team.

this happens in 9 out of 10 of the hotjoin games i play nowadays.
fine, no problem, go with the flow.

since the other team have one more player, the score gap quickly widens. usually by at least 50 points or even reaching 100 points gap.

if i am not in combat mode, i would attempt to quickly decap one of their uncontested, vacant capture points and then quickly enter spectator mode.

unfortunately, 10 seconds of down time while waiting for auto balance to happen is still there. so i need wait for the magic to happen.

if all goes well, the teams would finally be balanced. and i will proceed to join back my original team. please take note that i do not get any auto balance rewards for doing so, and the original team that i joined back is still losing in terms of points.

however, sometimes, someone would disrupt the auto balance by going into spectator mode themselves. though i am not sure if they are intentional or simply their solo arena queue is up and they got to go.

sometimes, we make a come back, most of the times, we lose anyway, but at least i dun feel so bad since i have tried my best to balance the teams via entering spectator mode to force an auto balance.

anyway, that is how hotjoin is like for me nowadays.

fortunately, i only play 3 games per day so i dun feel too jaded with this. i save my energy for tomorrow. so i can continue to enjoy 3 games of hotjoin everyday.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

well,

Yasha,

i would not call it abusing though but as a matter of fact, fully utilizing it as it is very obviously working as intended.

That is exactly the logic players used to justify similar easily abused systems in Neverwinter Online pvp.

What actually happens now is that you pretty much have to play the spectate and swap game in order to win a game in hotjoin. There is no reason to think this is “working as intended”, it is obviously an unintended by-product of the spectator mode/team swapping.

All that is needed is a few tweaks to the new system- such as not letting players swap teams and not allowing spectators to join a current game.

remove hotjoin or at least don’t give a kitten for winning hj/custom arena’s matches…there’s no reason to reward something a monkey with no hands can easily win stacking up, swapping teams, outnumbering other team and so on (Or just roflstomping ppl 1v3 since 90% of those in hj really dunno wtf are they doing thinking they’re still fighting pve mobs or wvsw returds)….hj it’s just an unskilled trollfeast…stop rewarding trolls

Remove all rewards in hot join. It is a place to test builds, duel and just don’t do anything serious. Add a solo queue without leaderboards that have decent rewards. And for the love of god, fix matchmaking and uneven match starts!

/rant

El Gaucho.5278:

- Once a player has joined the game – if they enter spectate then have them forfeit ALL bonus glory rewards at the end of the match.

- If you enter spectate after joining a team have the player forfeit reward track progress for the match.

That but both after joining team once.

Geiir.7603:

Remove all rewards in hot join. It is a place to test builds, duel and just don’t do anything serious. Add a solo queue without leaderboards that have decent rewards. And for the love of god, fix matchmaking and uneven match starts!

/rant

Hi Geeir – Thanks for your comments!

Can you explain how removing all rewards is better than penalising those using spectate to re-balance as I suggested? I don’t want to remove the incentives people have to play pvp, nor do I want to drive them to the solo queues where more experienced players already rant about inexperienced players joining. There should be a place for all types of players, and appropriate rewards for the time spent. My suggestion attempts to find a balance between those.

I’m curious to hear your rationale

asking to remove rank points rewards totally from hotjoin is ridiculous and unreasonable.

it will not happen.

El Gaucho.5278:

Geiir.7603:

Remove all rewards in hot join. It is a place to test builds, duel and just don’t do anything serious. Add a solo queue without leaderboards that have decent rewards. And for the love of god, fix matchmaking and uneven match starts!

/rant

Hi Geeir – Thanks for your comments!

Can you explain how removing all rewards is better than penalising those using spectate to re-balance as I suggested? I don’t want to remove the incentives people have to play pvp, nor do I want to drive them to the solo queues where more experienced players already rant about inexperienced players joining. There should be a place for all types of players, and appropriate rewards for the time spent. My suggestion attempts to find a balance between those.

I’m curious to hear your rationale

We both (all?) agree there is a problem, and while your suggestions are not without merit they focus on rewards, and a lot of the problem is due to the desire to win, rather than just the desire to get rewards.

So even Geeir’s extreme “remove all rewards” idea is unlikely to make a large difference – except perhaps to totally kill hotjoin. El Gaucho I think your idea’s would discourage such behaviour, but wouldn’t really effect people that that change so they can win.

It should be reasonably simple to tweak the system so the players cannot manipulate it for their own gains/to win.

The randomness of hotjoin in the past was one of its strengths- you could be on a strong team or a weak team, but that was usually due to luck since it was previously more difficult to force autobalance and rejoin the team of your choice.

Not trying to troll or anything but thi is why a lot of people want hot join removed. I don’t agree with them, because I feel it’s a great spot to test builds out before going into a ranked match…but even for that it’s not great. A lot of things tht work in a hot join zerg mess do not work in solo or team arenas. The fact that you go into hotjoin at this point and expect anything other than an unfair or a bullkitten match up is laughable. Hotjoin is supposed to be the place for you to basically pop in and play around for a bit an leave. It’s not really the place for you to have a competitive match.
That being said, they could make it a lot more enjoyable for people that want to live in there by:
1) removing the ability to switch teams after the match starts.
2) auto placing you onto a team upon joining the match. This would keep people from creating a stacked team. But, this would hurt those wanting to play with friends.
3) make hotjoin a better place to learn how conquest works. There should be a better system in place to teach people that zerging is not good and will lose you the match in ranked ques most of the time. Currently for someone just starting pvp you pretty much join the mists and have no clue what to do. Even the builds they start you out with are kitten.
Seriously, not trying to troll. But I have played for over a year and the same thread keeps popping up about how hotjoin is unfair. The best advice I can give is that if you are looking for a more competitive match up is to get into rank ques. Unfortunately, even they can be kitten a lot.

Yasha.5963:

We both (all?) agree there is a problem, and while your suggestions are not without merit they focus on rewards, and a lot of the problem is due to the desire to win, rather than just the desire to get rewards.

So even Geeir’s extreme “remove all rewards” idea is unlikely to make a large difference – except perhaps to totally kill hotjoin. El Gaucho I think your idea’s would discourage such behaviour, but wouldn’t really effect people that that change so they can win.

It should be reasonably simple to tweak the system so the players cannot manipulate it for their own gains/to win.

The randomness of hotjoin in the past was one of its strengths- you could be on a strong team or a weak team, but that was usually due to luck since it was previously more difficult to force autobalance and rejoin the team of your choice.

You raise a very good point, Yasha!

I do agree that my recommendations won’t address a fundamental desire to win.

I guess we ought to look at the metrics that show whether winning is the desire over the rewards? You could be totally correct and we make the change and it doesn’t fix this. I expect that ArenaNet may have access to this data, or be able to derive this by comparing pre and post reward track concurrent hotjoin users.

I feel (<-opinion here) that the PVP reward tracks changed things – more people definitely jumped in when these were added. Thusly, removing these rewards in this very specific scenario may help to alleviate the problem, if not eliminate it. Even if it ONLY removes 40% of team-swappers then that might just make hotjoin playable again.

If that fails then, of course, we need to look at other options.

Complete inaction isn’t going to remedy the problem. My recommendations attempt to be non intrusive. I can’t think of a way to address the balancing issue that doesn’t include these or similar penalties.

We can put a cooldown on spectate rejoins, but that will penalise players who legitimately need to jump out for a few minutes.

We could restrict players to only rejoining the team they joined unless they are autobalanced, but that penalises those players who like to join with one or more friends to be on the same / opposite team.

We could change the auto-balance rules in a variety of ways, but a determined team swapper will likely find a way of manipulating this.

Danzel – you too make good suggestion. Again, these begin to be slightly more obtrusive to the end experience, but they would support Yasha’s views too.

That said, I don’t want to be forced to be in Tpvp on a class I’m not very comfortable with. I play for fun – win or lose, I don’t especially care. But it does bother me when others are upset by winning or losing. Sometimes it’s just pvp trolling, but that also depends on my own ability to kitten when I can make a valuable contribution to a team game.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

asking to remove rank points rewards totally from hotjoin is ridiculous and unreasonable.

it will not happen.

or maybe this will lead more ppl into tournaments since many just farm hj for rank and rewards while still being total noobs….wanna feel pro in hj? Fine..getting rewarded for it? Don’t think so..if you want rewards you should work for those not just randomly spam stuff on random ppl for the lulz..if you want those rewards you should get good first..or at least it’s how pvp should work, rewarding nabs doing nothing (Aka rewards for losers, rank rework, cheese builds that can still be quite effective while you can just pretty much afk are the main problems in gw2 pvp since start) Not even talking about soloq, there are many top 100 (Mainly on engi…guess why..) who don’t even go tpvp and know kitten bout basic rotations and stuff….if they’re there it’s so obvious this game isn’t working like it should..