Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played PvP in a while, but I just got back into the swing of things over the past week. I remember from a looong time ago, volunteering to switch over to the losing side would result in a victory regardless of the outcome of the match. The past couple of games I have volunteered to switch in, has led to a meager reward, and negatively impacted my win-lose ratio.

I know it is silly to worry over such things, and I realize that I should just have fun… but I remembered there was more incentive to volunteering before and I am wondering where it went.

Why did this change occur? And what incentives is there to volunteering to lose?

Edit: For anyone that may be interested, I have written an example of what I am talking about on the 5th post.

It’s because you need to score points of some kind before switching for it to count.

The volunteering didn’t change, it still give you the victory bonus I can confirm. What seems not to be happening anymore is to obtain the victory bonus when unwillingly being switched to the other team (which happens to me about 90% of the times whether I am the #1 scorer of my team, the laast one of in the middle), which makes me feel forced to volunteer whenever the “volunteer” button appears. Basically, either willingly choose to leave the winning team to let a “fair autobalance-forcer” from the losing team join the winning team (steal my spot) or be switched anyway but with a penalisation. Lovely.

ddamico.4798:

It’s because you need to score points of some kind before switching for it to count.

But that’s the thing… I could be the first or second highest scorer on my team, and when I volunteer to join the other side it shows as a “loss” when I look it up on my scoreboard. It wasn’t like that before.

Silvia.9130:

The volunteering didn’t change, it still give you the victory bonus I can confirm. What seems not to be happening anymore is to obtain the victory bonus when unwillingly being switched to the other team (which happens to me about 90% of the times whether I am the #1 scorer of my team, the laast one of in the middle), which makes me feel forced to volunteer whenever the “volunteer” button appears. Basically, either willingly choose to leave the winning team to let a “fair autobalance-forcer” from the losing team join the winning team (steal my spot) or be switched anyway but with a penalisation. Lovely.

You’re right. The reason why I like to volunteer, is for that exact same reason. If I can earn bonus points and still achieve my much-deserved win, then fine, I don’t mind volunteering… but it doesn’t work exactly the same way as I remember it used to.

So, I did some testing and it isn’t as bad as I originally thought… but one thing has indeed changed since the last time I participated in PvP.

A match I just played 10 minutes ago:

• Join Skyhammer match when timer is counting down (score is 0:0).
• My team is winning [350 : 0] and the entire opposing team rage-quits.
• At this point I have the highest score on my team, with kills and objective captures.
• “I volunteer as tribute!” Successfully switch over.
• Eventually lose the match on the new side despite my best efforts.
• Receive Volunteer bonus, as well as Top Player bonuses for Obj. Neutralizer, Obj. Defender, and Revives. Also receive 437 points for winning the match.
• Receive daily reward for Elementalist Victory.
• Personal scoreboard shows that I have +1 on games played, but +0 on games won. Same with +1 Elementalist battles, +0 Elementalist wins.

As I said, it isn’t as bad as I had initially observed. I still got compensated for volunteering, and the game even said that I had “won”. But, the last two points are still a spot of bother for me. If I had an “Elementalist Victory” daily complete for me, why does it still show as a loss on my record? It wasn’t like that before.

Is this perhaps a bug? Or a deliberate change? That’s all I really want to know.

Kross.6428:

…

• Receive Volunteer bonus, as well as Top Player bonuses for Obj. Neutralizer, Obj. Defender, and Revives. Also receive 437 points for winning the match.

This definitely can happen but not sure what drives that. And if your new team loses team you rarely get win-worth of points. If you want the win, volunteering is good. If you want the points, volunteering is bad. If you want to help the underdog, volunteering is good.

Seems like they should let you get your win points and also seems like they ought to give people a bonus in hot join for joining the side with fewer players.