Guild Wars 2

Well Anet, you did finally drive me away from WvW for the most part.. And recently with the addition of reward tracks have gotten me a bit interested in Spvp.

I like working towards a track and being able to earn skins / xmutes and even some gold from PvP since I don’t enjoy the PVE aspect of the game.

Here’s the catch.. Once again, I find Anet feels the strange need to force me into things I don’t want to do.

I am -not- into tournaments. I dislike several maps, I HATE Skyhammer with a kittening passion.

I want to just play casually when I have time – not be committed to wasting my time remaining in severely unbalanced matches. Or being forced to play in a map I absolutely have 0 fun playing or force risk becoming locked out of pvp..

I was having AMAZING fun doing hotjoins and loving that I was able to earn the above mentioned things meanwhile. But that didn’t last long as my progress gets locked.. Forcing me to play the mode I don’t have fun in.

Make it slower to progress in hotjoins..

Ban botters if that’s the issue (your lack of in-game detailed report options in this day and age of online gaming is pathetic).

Make rules against farming arenas and close them down when you find them (hey another reason for a REAL reporting system / lazy and pathetic). – if that’s your reasoning..

Anything, just remove this ridiculous lock so I can progress and earn the things I want (its still slow anyways) while playing the way I want. You know, like you always have and continually promise but deliver the opposite.

Well i hope you got that rage out your system

clint.5681:

Well i hope you got that rage out your system

Not quite I need to post it in a few more topics. Or better yet, after every queued match I’m forced to play in order to get reward track progression. This way, I can annoy Anet as much as they do I.

they are not forcing u pal,u want rewards u need to solo or team que,u cant zerg in hotjoin with ur pals and get rewards,u need to go solo que and win atleast one duel or node by urself without ur hotjoiners pal.Not every1 is meant to have those rewards,those rewards are for us pvp players so we dont get bored not some casual hotjoiner thank you

fully agree, the progress lock makes no sense at all and hurts everyone.
so because a tiny fraction of people are farming anet decide to punish the rest of us?
get a clue anet!

forcing casuals and newbies into tournaments sucks for EVERYONE:
the casual hates it because he’s getting facerolled by meta clones and elitists.
the meta clones and elitists rage at the casual for dragging their team down.
everyone finishes the match feeling frustrated.
Play your Way “aslong as your way is what we tell you.”

DISABLE THE REWARD LOCKING.

They made solo and team queue inaccessible for a few reasons, among them:

1.Trash leaderboards + queue system that screw with newcomers
2. Veteran players with condescending attitude (“thats why you guys should go back to PvE you suck”) that screw with newcomers
3. Removal of hotjoin 8v8 which made ragequitting a larger problem and screw with newcomers
4. Skyhammer that screw with all of us
5. Rated queues: afk/casuals with attitude (“shutup i got more pts than u you can’t say anything lolol” or “i got legendary im better than u so”) that screws with tryhards
6. Single disappointing and boring gamemode (well, there’s courtyard now…)

With the above factors it made hotjoin less fun and pushed newcomers and casuals towards a game mode that comes with a very discouraging atmosphere (the rated queues). The fault could be on both sides. This is because the small GW2 PvP population:

1. Does not form guilds like Academy of the Mists that encourage newcomers and provide guidance
2. Is not willing to learn about conquest
3. Is not willing to do research about standard builds, playstyles and keybinding (you can be “hardcore casual” about the game by learning more)
4. Is elitist and snobbish and talks down to newcomers but only say l2p and don’t teach
5. Can’t take any criticism and rage back before thinking through
6. See rewards as the ultimate goal of PvP

In the end, PvP is about self-improvement. If fundamentally you find competition (queues are a joke anyway) off-putting, and only go for the rewards, it may be better to form a team for the dungeons (since the rewards are better). If you can’t change the system, the only thing left is yourself. There are reasons you win or lose, and you have to understand them to improve. See PvP as the goal, and the wins and rewards are icing on the cake. Learn from your mistakes, get better, find friends to play with. Remember that the people who PvP’d for the past 1.5 years had nothing but rank points, 18 and 20 slot bags and skins only usable in PvP to go on, and yet we still hold on to the game mode.

Fact: I completed 3 Arah dungeon tracks with 255 Solo queue and Team queue games. 150 wins, 105 losses, over a week of playing. In that period, I ran team queues with friends, against top teams and getting trashed, against good teams and get close matches, against bad teams and running crazy zerker comps, get trash-talked by people in solo queue, doubted myself, made loads of mistakes that could have cost us the game… and yet I’m still playing and queuing because I love being on vent and messing around in PvP. There will be wins and losses, but in the end every game gets my pulse racing (at least until you know it’s GG either way…).

Reward locking is the result of long-running problems with how GW2 handles PvP. I say fix everything else and this won’t even be on your minds. It’s just sad when then only thing people feel concerned about and satisfactory about is getting rewards and they are no longer getting a thrill from playing the game mechanics.

The problem is the exploiting that goes on in custom arenas and hotjoin. Imo this is why they are doing this. In general though I am 100% for being able to do whatever you want in game and being able to earn rewards.

clint.5681:

Well i hope you got that rage out your system

It is a valid complaint though. People should be able to do whatever they want in game imo and get rewarded for it. These rewards arent even good thats the sad thing so to act like you should need to jump through some kind of hoops to get them is kind of ludicrous. There needs to be some kind of extra reward for doing well in team and solo arena but these reward tracks are trash to begin with.

the track rewards aren’t good enough to lock progression.

maybe just put limits on the dungeon ones?

dank.3680:

Well Anet, you did finally drive me away from WvW for the most part.. And recently with the addition of reward tracks have gotten me a bit interested in Spvp.

I like working towards a track and being able to earn skins / xmutes and even some gold from PvP since I don’t enjoy the PVE aspect of the game.

Here’s the catch.. Once again, I find Anet feels the strange need to force me into things I don’t want to do.

I am -not- into tournaments. I dislike several maps, I HATE Skyhammer with a kittening passion.

I want to just play casually when I have time – not be committed to wasting my time remaining in severely unbalanced matches. Or being forced to play in a map I absolutely have 0 fun playing or force risk becoming locked out of pvp..

I was having AMAZING fun doing hotjoins and loving that I was able to earn the above mentioned things meanwhile. But that didn’t last long as my progress gets locked.. Forcing me to play the mode I don’t have fun in.

Make it slower to progress in hotjoins..

Ban botters if that’s the issue (your lack of in-game detailed report options in this day and age of online gaming is pathetic).

Make rules against farming arenas and close them down when you find them (hey another reason for a REAL reporting system / lazy and pathetic). – if that’s your reasoning..

Anything, just remove this ridiculous lock so I can progress and earn the things I want (its still slow anyways) while playing the way I want. You know, like you always have and continually promise but deliver the opposite.

I think the lock from the stickied thread says it is 2 tiers per day. If you aren’t farming the hotjoin w/ friends and you are just playing it should take a little while to hit that limit. Go back to wvw for the rest of the day.

Come back to hotjoins the next day. If you max out the 2 tiers per day w/ just hot joins then should only take you 4 days to complete a track.

I don’t think the benefits of removing the 2 tier/day limit would be worth the exploiting that would happen without it.

brannigan.9831:

clint.5681:

Well i hope you got that rage out your system

It is a valid complaint though. People should be able to do whatever they want in game imo and get rewarded for it. These rewards arent even good thats the sad thing so to act like you should need to jump through some kind of hoops to get them is kind of ludicrous. There needs to be some kind of extra reward for doing well in team and solo arena but these reward tracks are trash to begin with.

I didnt say if I thought it was valid or not.

even simplistic websites can keep people from botting them, so i don’t see how GW2 makes it harder.

maybe after you’ve played X number of games in a day, in order to “Play Now” it asks you some sort of random question or captcha-like entry to prove you are not a bot etc.

and that’s just off the top of my head – I’m sure there is either a better way to prevent botting than limiting progression, or more likely there are more reasons they want progression limited such as to force people to soloq to reduce queue times which they view as one of the most important issues.

Paragon.5479:

they are not forcing u pal,u want rewards u need to solo or team que,u cant zerg in hotjoin with ur pals and get rewards,u need to go solo que and win atleast one duel or node by urself without ur hotjoiners pal.Not every1 is meant to have those rewards,those rewards are for us pvp players so we dont get bored not some casual hotjoiner thank you

1v1 me bro..

Seriously though, that’s all I read in your silly paragraph there.

Every player in the game needs to be reward by playing the parts of the game they enjoy. Not only big ego’d, self-centric sçrubs like you.

Ralkuth.1456:

/TLDQ

I just want to clear up one thing you addressed in your post. I do not do PvP just for the reward tracks (some people do and that to me is perfectly acceptable).

I do also quite enjoy playing SoloQ matches several times a day. But only when I have time and motivation to fully dedicate myself to a team/match. When I don’t have to worry my home distractions hurting my team.

For me hotjoin is the filler between when I’m ready to go in a Queued match. Kind of like farming risen in an area around an event spot between events. It’s where I can play and enjoy some PvP when I might not be fully commited, or have high chances of distractions or w/e.

Should I not get drops from random risen in event zones because there might be botters? This is exactly the logic happening here.

I agree TeamQ should have higher rewards, SoloQ should have lower then team and higher then Hotjoin. But Hotjoin progression should NOT be limited to 2 tracks per 24 hours, it is simply ridiculous and unfair, not only that it doesn’t solve the problem it’s supposedly intended to solve.

If I feel like PvP’ing all day I end up feeling forced to go into SoloQ’s even though I might not particularly want to once I get locked out of progressing.

Sure I love PvP itself and play mostly for that. But lets face it, who doesn’t enjoy unlocking new skins and things of that sort while enjoying the game. It may not be the most important part of joining in a pvp game, but it is important nonetheless to many many players.

Jaxom.7310:

dank.3680:

Well Anet, you did finally drive me away from WvW for the most part.. And recently with the addition of reward tracks have gotten me a bit interested in Spvp.

I like working towards a track and being able to earn skins / xmutes and even some gold from PvP since I don’t enjoy the PVE aspect of the game.

Here’s the catch.. Once again, I find Anet feels the strange need to force me into things I don’t want to do.

I am -not- into tournaments. I dislike several maps, I HATE Skyhammer with a kittening passion.

I want to just play casually when I have time – not be committed to wasting my time remaining in severely unbalanced matches. Or being forced to play in a map I absolutely have 0 fun playing or force risk becoming locked out of pvp..

I was having AMAZING fun doing hotjoins and loving that I was able to earn the above mentioned things meanwhile. But that didn’t last long as my progress gets locked.. Forcing me to play the mode I don’t have fun in.

Make it slower to progress in hotjoins..

Ban botters if that’s the issue (your lack of in-game detailed report options in this day and age of online gaming is pathetic).

Make rules against farming arenas and close them down when you find them (hey another reason for a REAL reporting system / lazy and pathetic). – if that’s your reasoning..

Anything, just remove this ridiculous lock so I can progress and earn the things I want (its still slow anyways) while playing the way I want. You know, like you always have and continually promise but deliver the opposite.

I think the lock from the stickied thread says it is 2 tiers per day. If you aren’t farming the hotjoin w/ friends and you are just playing it should take a little while to hit that limit. Go back to wvw for the rest of the day.

Come back to hotjoins the next day. If you max out the 2 tiers per day w/ just hot joins then should only take you 4 days to complete a track.

I don’t think the benefits of removing the 2 tier/day limit would be worth the exploiting that would happen without it.

I PvP ONLY by myself as my guild and friends are pure wvw players for the most part. I find it VERY easy to hit this lock solo in hotjoins when I have a day off or w/e. Obviously its not happening on nights where I play only a couple hours. But the days it does happen, are the ones I’m wishing to further my progressions the most.

“Go back to WvW”

Why? Why should I have to do that?

Can’t people bot better rewards already, easily, in PvE? This botter excuse is silly.

If the lock is removed the only thing this will do is encourage more people to afk autorun into wall after capping a point and wait for endgame reward.
You have any good suggestions to prevent this from happening?
Rewarded by playing the parts of the game they enjoy huh. You -are- rewarded. Just not to the extent that you want to.
Think it’s a bit different in an MMO. You can mod and cheat in single player offline games, but in an MMO achievements should come with effort. With effort → achievement → comparison with peers → superiority → enjoyment as your primary concern. Can’t skip straight to enjoyment for free. If I can just get the best stuff in game by casual play, then everyone will have everything and no one will be playing this.

You can say what you want and call names and defend your claim. But I don’t think your demands will go anywhere. Have fun.

Ralkuth.1456:

If the lock is removed the only thing this will do is encourage more people to afk autorun into wall after capping a point and wait for endgame reward.
You have any good suggestions to prevent this from happening?
Rewarded by playing the parts of the game they enjoy huh. You -are- rewarded. Just not to the extent that you want to.
Think it’s a bit different in an MMO. You can mod and cheat in single player offline games, but in an MMO achievements should come with effort. With effort -> achievement -> comparison with peers -> superiority -> enjoyment as your primary concern. Can’t skip straight to enjoyment for free. If I can just get the best stuff in game by casual play, then everyone will have everything and no one will be playing this.

You can say what you want and call names and defend your claim. But I don’t think your demands will go anywhere. Have fun.

You do realize all this does is push those afk-autorunners into the SoloQ arenas right? Would you rather scrubs were in hotjoins where you are free to leave, or ruining SoloQ matches you are bound to remain in?

By the way Neverwinter managed to combat this very same problem without breaking pvp rewards, and in that game these afkers were a PLAGUE.

Getting rewarded for playing the parts of the game you like for a limited time for day is NOT being rewarded to ANY extent for the remainder of that play day, unless you UNWILLINGLY play another form of the game mode.

This is like saying, oh from now on you can only get rewarded for 1 keep cap in EOTM due to preventing organized guilds from farming pugs.. It’s RIDICULOUS!!

BTW- You can ALREADY get WAY HIGHER rewards through MORE CASUAL play such as boss farming which just got way easier.. So much for that argument.

I have yet to see any afk people in solo queue solely just for rewards, you are being a bit overdramatic of the situation. And even if people did AFK (which they do not) their ranking would reduce to the point where anyone who is in that bracket is really bad at PvP.

Chase.8415:

I have yet to see any afk people in solo queue solely just for rewards, you are being a bit overdramatic of the situation. And even if people did AFK (which they do not) their ranking would reduce to the point where anyone who is in that bracket is really bad at PvP.

Fair enough, I suppose I embellished that particular point. (Even though it’s not exactly the topic of this thread).

I have however seen several soloQ matches ruined due to afkers.

But another thing comes to mind which makes it hard to even read any opinion you may have. Why is it that you feel players who may not be so good in pvp don’t count and it doesn’t matter if they are having a bad experience due to afk’ers or whatnot?

dank.3680:

Chase.8415:

I have yet to see any afk people in solo queue solely just for rewards, you are being a bit overdramatic of the situation. And even if people did AFK (which they do not) their ranking would reduce to the point where anyone who is in that bracket is really bad at PvP.

Fair enough, I suppose I embellished that particular point. (Even though it’s not exactly the topic of this thread).

I have however seen several soloQ matches ruined due to afkers.

But another thing comes to mind which makes it hard to even read any opinion you may have. Why is it that you feel players who may not be so good in pvp don’t count and it doesn’t matter if they are having a bad experience due to afk’ers or whatnot?

95% of the playerbase who participate in tournaments would not be affected if people just afk’ed every single match and forced a loss. That is how the rating system works, you will keep losing and you will face against other who also keep losing.

A person who AFK because they are losing is much different than a person who just afk’s because of rewards. The whole reason for capping rewards in hotjoins in the first place was to prevent bots who AFK for rewards.

If you notice someone consistently afking in solo queue, you can report them for botting (as no sane player would just play the game to sit in the base every match) and they will be banned.

In what world is that forcing you to play? the hell, brah

Chase.8415:

dank.3680:

Chase.8415:

I have yet to see any afk people in solo queue solely just for rewards, you are being a bit overdramatic of the situation. And even if people did AFK (which they do not) their ranking would reduce to the point where anyone who is in that bracket is really bad at PvP.

Fair enough, I suppose I embellished that particular point. (Even though it’s not exactly the topic of this thread).

I have however seen several soloQ matches ruined due to afkers.

But another thing comes to mind which makes it hard to even read any opinion you may have. Why is it that you feel players who may not be so good in pvp don’t count and it doesn’t matter if they are having a bad experience due to afk’ers or whatnot?

95% of the playerbase who participate in tournaments would not be affected if people just afk’ed every single match and forced a loss. That is how the rating system works, you will keep losing and you will face against other who also keep losing.

A person who AFK because they are losing is much different than a person who just afk’s because of rewards. The whole reason for capping rewards in hotjoins in the first place was to prevent bots who AFK for rewards.

If you notice someone consistently afking in solo queue, you can report them for botting (as no sane player would just play the game to sit in the base every match) and they will be banned.

Well first of all, you seem to ignore the other 4 people in a match who lose due to 1 person afking and ruining the game. They also don’t move up.

Also the bottom of the ladder is where new players arrive. Should it not matter if this is a toxic environment? Of course it does..

Please realize you are no more important then me or joe schmoe or the guy who keyboard turns and takes 5 seconds to click a skill.

As to your last point, it is of my opinion that the reporting system should work for all parts of the games and all players.. Not just those who think they are more important then others. So why couldn’t we report in hotjoin too?

Aside from that, afk botters in hotjoin was not even the stated reason for this. In fact HOTJOIN wasn’t even mentioned in the post.

As some of you have noticed, reward tracks are capped at TWO TIERS a day if you are playing in custom arenas. This is intended to prevent botting in custom arenas. There is NO LIMIT to how much progress you can make on reward tracks if you are playing in solo or team arena. Just wanted to clear this up!

How hard would it be for there to be a reporting system for reporting farm arenas? Again a low budget game called Neverwinter easily solved this same issue with their “Foundry”(a tool which allowed people to build their own levels and upload them into the main game).

Oh btw when you are soloQ, you know solo. There are 4 other people who help determine that win/loss.. If you are with 4 people who wont work with you, you aren’t going to win. Your win/loss or ranking in SoloQ means absolutely nothing.

dank.3680:

Make it slower to progress in hotjoins.

Anything, just remove this ridiculous lock so I can progress and earn the things I want (its still slow anyways) while playing the way I want.

BTW- You can ALREADY get WAY HIGHER rewards through MORE CASUAL play such as boss farming which just got way easier.. So much for that argument.

Oh btw when you are soloQ, you know solo. There are 4 other people who help determine that win/loss.. If you are with 4 people who wont work with you, you aren’t going to win.

Discerning what you want is amusing.

Then you are forcing non-fun on yourself by choosing to go with a game mode that doesn’t reward you as much. What is it you want? Do you want to PvP for the rewards or just PvP for fun? Or do you PvP for progress? So you want both and you’d even slow down progress on the track just so you can feel like you’re earning progress throughout the day?

I’d like to remind you that before this patch, the more you PvP you only get to PvP in prettier clothes. Did you find hotjoin amazing then? Or did the rewards make hotjoin amazing?

I guess you just want increased rewards for minimal effort invested. Fair enough… but I doubt that’s what Anet wants for their tiny PvP community. They made Solo queue and Team queue more rewarding for a reason. PvP is competitive by nature and if they want it to thrive or at least not die out, they will encourage people to dive into the deep end. Some new players are willing to learn and attend informal tutorial workshops and they read up on how to play conquest. They take the flak that the condescending veterans throw at them and keep going. More effort, more rewards. They are putting out that effort.

You seem to be nitpicking the definition that Anet provided for the reward capping. The reality remains that no matter who you are, Anet gives no flying kittens about what you want. People have suggested fixes, trait rework, skill revamps, map removals… and Anet always come up with their own ideas.

Some aspects of solo queue would play out the same as hotjoin – if you have players that won’t work with you, you won’t win either. What does hotjoin offer that Solo queue doesn’t? The ability to leave game and switch sides when the game’s not in your favour? You seem awfully adamant on staying away from other aspects of PvP. Higher up in Solo queue, people try and play to win and your concerns of leaving and afk’ing should be alleviated. Too much hotjoin can be bad for morale. Work your way up the ladder and the action gets better.

TL;DR You want more stuff for less. We’ve all been there. Stand in line. Deal with it.

Ralkuth.1456:

dank.3680:

Make it slower to progress in hotjoins.

Anything, just remove this ridiculous lock so I can progress and earn the things I want (its still slow anyways) while playing the way I want.

BTW- You can ALREADY get WAY HIGHER rewards through MORE CASUAL play such as boss farming which just got way easier.. So much for that argument.

Oh btw when you are soloQ, you know solo. There are 4 other people who help determine that win/loss.. If you are with 4 people who wont work with you, you aren’t going to win.

Discerning what you want is amusing.

Then you are forcing non-fun on yourself by choosing to go with a game mode that doesn’t reward you as much. What is it you want? Do you want to PvP for the rewards or just PvP for fun? Or do you PvP for progress? So you want both and you’d even slow down progress on the track just so you can feel like you’re earning progress throughout the day?

I’d like to remind you that before this patch, the more you PvP you only get to PvP in prettier clothes. Did you find hotjoin amazing then? Or did the rewards make hotjoin amazing?

I guess you just want increased rewards for minimal effort invested. Fair enough… but I doubt that’s what Anet wants for their tiny PvP community. They made Solo queue and Team queue more rewarding for a reason. PvP is competitive by nature and if they want it to thrive or at least not die out, they will encourage people to dive into the deep end. Some new players are willing to learn and attend informal tutorial workshops and they read up on how to play conquest. They take the flak that the condescending veterans throw at them and keep going. More effort, more rewards. They are putting out that effort.

You seem to be nitpicking the definition that Anet provided for the reward capping. The reality remains that no matter who you are, Anet gives no flying kittens about what you want. People have suggested fixes, trait rework, skill revamps, map removals… and Anet always come up with their own ideas.

Some aspects of solo queue would play out the same as hotjoin – if you have players that won’t work with you, you won’t win either. What does hotjoin offer that Solo queue doesn’t? The ability to leave game and switch sides when the game’s not in your favour? You seem awfully adamant on staying away from other aspects of PvP. Higher up in Solo queue, people try and play to win and your concerns of leaving and afk’ing should be alleviated. Too much hotjoin can be bad for morale. Work your way up the ladder and the action gets better.

TL;DR You want more stuff for less. We’ve all been there. Deal with it.

What do I want? I already made that very clear 10 times now.. I’ll do it again for the fun of it.

I want to spend all day Saturday doing hotjoins if I feel like it by myself and not be punished for 2/3 of the day by not progressing toward the skin I would like to unlock.

No I don’t want “more for less”. In fact I could argue it could take MORE effort to secure wins in hotjoins.

Wow that sounds like such an unreasonable thing!!

You make a lot of stupid assumptions about my thoughts which completely contradict what I have posted in this topic.. So I wont respond to any of that junk.

Oh I want to mention that up until the recent patch since release I have been a completely WvW only player spending thousands of hours in WvW for little to no reward.

Anet is finally getting on track fixing some of the systems in this game that shaft certain players.. This decision though is a mistake in my opinion. And I will continue to speak out against it whether you think anyone else cares or not.

*As a side note. The recent patch contained MANY things in it spurred by players like me speaking out against things they found lacking. So I’m pretty sure Anet does “give a kitten” about me and others.

You don’t want unbalanced matches – but hotjoin -is- severely unbalanced. You said Anet promises but deliver the opposite – and you then say they do give a kitten. That was why I was asking – I wasn’t sure what your intended meanings were.

I understand your desire to remove the reward cap – but I am of the opinion that it will never happen with the direction Anet is taking. Thus, I have tried to convince you that going with what they had in mind would be more fun – and rewarding – in the long run. However, I can’t change opinion in an argument without convincing, scientific evidence that proves me right, and I’ve been foolish in riling you up. If I’ve upset you, I apologise. You did give me your time in replies after all.

Maybe you have more positivity than I do. I guess one can dream; and one can then succeed.

Ralkuth.1456:

You don’t want unbalanced matches – but hotjoin -is- severely unbalanced. You said Anet promises but deliver the opposite – and you then say they do give a kitten. That was why I was asking – I wasn’t sure what your intended meanings were.

I understand your desire to remove the reward cap – but I am of the opinion that it will never happen with the direction Anet is taking. Thus, I have tried to convince you that going with what they had in mind would be more fun – and rewarding – in the long run. However, I can’t change opinion in an argument without convincing, scientific evidence that proves me right, and I’ve been foolish in riling you up. If I’ve upset you, I apologise. You did give me your time in replies after all.

Maybe you have more positivity than I do. I guess one can dream; and one can then succeed.

It’s not that I don’t want unbalanced matches. I recognize those happen in every aspect of sPvP it’s just how it is. It’s not even that I want to leave every match that is unbalanced. 400/100 where my team is just being idiotic, yes sometimes when I’m playing I want that option available.

I did not say Anet promises and does not deliver. I am of the opinion that Anet neglected many players throughout several systems in the game for a long time. It is quite obvious they now realize that mistake and have made massive efforts to reverse things. I agree with a lot of decisions they made with this new patch and frankly love it to death. This one decision I happen to feel is a foolish enough step backwards that I want to loudly voice my opinion on it.

I did already mention that I do enjoy soloQ to a certain extent. I actually enjoy it quite a lot. But the thing is, when I click that Q button, it’s serious mode. I always try my best to not let my team down and to help organize a win in any way I can. For me being in a competitive match(even just a solo Q) is a high adrenaline somewhat stressful experience.

I am not always in the mood to put myself in that situation, and certainly am rarely motivated to do it several times in a row. Generally on a long play day it goes something like – First a soloQ followed potentially several hours of hotjoining, another soloQ maybe 2 or 3, and more hotjoin hours.. etc.. Generally before I’ve spent half a day my progression is locked.

My biggest issue is the reason for this limit. Anet implemented it in their own words to combat botting in custom arenas, nothing about hotjoins. I find this to be quite a lazy and barely effective “set it and forget it” tactic.

Would it not be much easier and effective to eliminate these Custom Arenas which allow such things. Or at least fix it so there is a distinction from CA/HJ and eliminate this limit in HJ.

Lets face it, botting in hotjoin is not the issue. It’s nowhere near the same as these Custom Farms. For one, the team with the afk guy is going to LOSE – whats the point in that? For the botting to be effective you need a fully committed server that lets one side win quickly over and over.

It’s a bit contradictory because, yes 99% of me is playing just because I love player versus player and always have. But there is also that 1% that also craves unlocking new skins and dressing up all my toons and changing dyes around all the time.. This all takes gold and xmutes and all that junk.

I have endured enough neglect in this area being a WvW player.. I’m tired of it. Anet has made recently huge steps in the right direction, but this is wrong.

Also it takes more then a forum post to make me mad. I did find value in many of your words.

Paragon.5479:

they are not forcing u pal,u want rewards u need to solo or team que,u cant zerg in hotjoin with ur pals and get rewards,u need to go solo que and win atleast one duel or node by urself without ur hotjoiners pal.Not every1 is meant to have those rewards,those rewards are for us pvp players so we dont get bored not some casual hotjoiner thank you

You mean you PvP’ers that suffer 4 vs 5? Or you mean you soloQ’ers who also get rabbit rank everywhere because of the hotjoin cut off mark?..or you mean you PvPer’s who have epic MMR match ups of top 10 team against PuG?..what part of your elitist story are you hoping makes you sound pro?..On any given day I will see reapers, marauders, champions in hotjoin. In fact I am willing to stake in all hotjoin matches at any given time there is at least 20 people who 1 vs 1 would not only down you, but make you look sad. This is the reality. The skill level of players is distributed across the entire game. That is why you’re seeing fractal backpiece’s in PvP and Balth backpiece’s in Fractals. There is no proof that is beyond reasonable doubt that soloQ is anymore skilled, or requires more skill than hotjoin. The amount of MM and spirit rangers, decap engi’s I see in soloQ is shameful, at least when I do hotjoin I see people experimenting with new builds for competitive play at a future stage. In the ToL, what did we see..hammer warriors and petting zoo’s again. So please drop the attitude that soloQ is in anyway skilled, or has a higher tier of player when in reality it is just another version of hotjoin.

OP:

The system is definitely not perfect. Hotjoins are so casual and flexible that you can do anything you want. Teams vs. randoms, high ranks vs. low ranks—anything goes.

I think that’s why the cap exists. Anet wanted to keep hotjoins for casual players—specifically those who don’t play for long periods of time at once.

PS just solo join team queues. No Skyham, almost no 4v5s, and practically no full teams except for the top 100 spots or so.