Guild Wars 2

I know its just hotjoin and as such it shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but the increasing number of players abusing (or downright exploiting) some mechanics really starts getting to me.

• Issue #1:
  Players can easily identify more experienced players during a match and stack on the same team at the beginning of the next round for an easy victory.
  Once two or three good players have stacked other players are reluctant to join the other color causing even further imbalance in the team composition (4 average/good players vs. 3 inexperienced/average players).
  This causes incredibly lopsided matchups which are no fun for either team.

• Fix #1:
  Make the ability to select your color at the begining of the match a toggleable setting and disable it for servers provided by ANet.

• Issue #2:
  When losing a game an increasing number of players abuses an oversight in the interface to switch places with someone on the wining team.
  While the player that got switched over still gets credited for the victory, this is a case of match manipulation which is forbidden by the GW2 Rules of Conduct and should be fixed.

• Fix #2:
  Prevent players that left the game from re-joining on the oposing team once a game has started.

These are all fairly good ideas. I’d like to add another point to your “fix #2.”

—> When a player joins a hotjoin match, they must choose to either spectate or play before they can see the team scores and player rosters. Do not allow them to swap between spectating and playing during the match. This will ensure that they don’t spectate then team stack.

1 Fix only: Remove it for the gods sake. Casuals should have a better choice instead of this zerg-fest where ppl don’t learn anything.

Still no tutorial in basic-mechanics for beginners, still no option to play against bots, no Guides or Build-Suggestions. This leaves people without a clue. And when they try to make the next step by joining soloQ or TeamQ, they literally get crushed or flamed by more experienced players.
This system just poorly thought out in my opinion.

I don’t think removing hotjoin would do much but fill solo (or even team) queue with inexperienced players or people testing new build ideas.

Also it would severely hinder custom made tournaments and community growth.

We need more fixing instead of scrapping.

Most of the time it’s not “losing a game” that causes people to switch, it’s imbalanced teams. On a 4v5 ofcourse the team with 4 is gonna lose, so players join spectate to force autobalance and then join the winning team.

The only fixes I want to see for hotjoin:

• Standard servers have no spectate mode.
• Teamswapping disables after the game starts.
• Autobalance kicks in on 4v5 on 100 points difference.

At this point Hotjoin has degenerated so bad, you might as well call the mode Winning-Team-Join now…

I have reported innumerable people for “scaming” (as there is no way to report for exploiting) because they abuse the autobalace system to force their way into the winning team.

Also 90% of the matches have been become so lopsided that the winning team becomes apparent at the start of the match.

Clip.6845:

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Issue #2:
When losing a game an increasing number of players abuses an oversight in the interface to switch places with someone on the wining team.
While the player that got switched over still gets credited for the victory, this is a case of match manipulation which is forbidden by the GW2 Rules of Conduct and should be fixed."

Most of the time it’s not “losing a game” that causes people to switch, it’s imbalanced teams. On a 4v5 ofcourse the team with 4 is gonna lose, so players join spectate to force autobalance and then join the winning team.

The only fixes I want to see for hotjoin:

• Standard servers have no spectate mode.
• Teamswapping disables after the game starts.
• Autobalance kicks in on 4v5 on 100 points difference.

Now that looks mighty fine Clip… I think you nailed it.

Clip.6845:

The only fixes I want to see for hotjoin:

• Standard servers have no spectate mode.
• Teamswapping disables after the game starts.
• Autobalance kicks in on 4v5 on 100 points difference.

I agree with the disabled team swapping, and autobalance, but I feel the spectate mode in hotjoin is really important.

From time to time you might meet someone playing an unfamiliar build, and you are loosing to him, then the spectator mode is important to learn more about his play style and how to compete with him. For new players it might even help to understand the basics better.

it would be so easy to fix the exploit that ruins every single match,
yet anet refuse to do so, highly frustrating…

even something as simple as disabling team select if they don’t have the time to improve it with restrictions.
(because we all know that the pvp devs are so very busy.)

funny how whenever a pve exploit appears it is hotfixed within a week,
a pvp exploit exists that ruins every match and it goes ignored for months…

Excellent points, but what if you want to play with, say, a friend who just joined the game, and be on the same/opposite team in hotjoin ? I think that is one of the reason why you can still chose your team in the beginning of the match. Maybe just give a limited time you can stay in spectator mode when you join/in the beginning, and when that time is passed you can not join anymore. When you are in, you can go to spectator mode whenever you want, but then can not get back in the game. It will not fix the good player-stacking, but hotjoin is not meant to be balanced, and the fact that you can no longer see pvp rank in spectator mode improved the situation a little bit on this front.

Spectating Mode is something I’d like to see more of. As mentioned previously, every now and then I come across an exceptional build or player and am curious to learn more about it. For this, Spectate Mode is a wonderful educational tool. In it’s current state it is being abused though, and I would like to see spectators unable to join the match after the game has started.

As for team selection, I think this needs to stay as well. Hotjoin is great for practice, testing builds, or just getting in some pvp without the need to wait on queues. The ability to do this with friends is great too. However, I feel that upon entering a hotjoin match, the player should see nothing but three options, Join Red, Join Blue, or Spectate. This way, you do not know who will be on your team, yet you can still pre-determine which team to join among friends if you still wish to play together. Also, to see the match/players you’d have to click Spectate, which upon doing so would prevent you from joining the fight during that match.

As for Autobalance, as mentioned previously it needs to take score imbalances into consideration along with player imbalances.

With these changes, Hotjoin could continue to be something quick and enjoyable to play. You can’t completely eliminate exploits, but an effort can at least be made to reduce them.

The core problem is the PLAYERS.

People who rage quit cause 80% of the issues in hotjoin.

10% are the cowards who don’t que at the start and wait to join a winning team (hence creating even worse team imbalances).

The other 10% are team-swappers who manipulate a poorly implemented system.

To fix these sorry players….you need serious PENALTIES and debuffs.

These behaviors need to be totally discouraged because it doesn’t matter what type of loophole you close, these type players will always be bad sports and cause trouble in other ways.

Good thing they worried about imbalances in hotjoins so much that they just deleted Raid on Capricorn…It was clearly so imba compared to the current state of hotjoin /facepalm

SPESHAL.9106:

The core problem is the PLAYERS.

People who rage quit cause 80% of the issues in hotjoin.

10% are the cowards who don’t que at the start and wait to join a winning team (hence creating even worse team imbalances).

The other 10% are team-swappers who manipulate a poorly implemented system.

To fix these sorry players….you need serious PENALTIES and debuffs.

These behaviors need to be totally discouraged because it doesn’t matter what type of loophole you close, these type players will always be bad sports and cause trouble in other ways.

Good thing they worried about imbalances in hotjoins so much that they just deleted Raid on Capricorn…It was clearly so imba compared to the current state of hotjoin /facepalm

Did you read this post at all before commenting?

I completely agree. I can not imagine you can have fun team-swapping all day long. I tried it once, and I felt awful. And you can not remove rewards from hotjoin as some players suggested, because it would turn down any new player wanting to get into pvp.