Guild Wars 2 is a video game. Most people play video games to have fun, and perhaps escape from the crap that occurs in daily life. sPvP is a competitive (in theory) game type.
Being stuck with a 5v4 match is neither fun, nor competitive.
So why does ANet force such an unpleasant experience onto it’s customers? I have no kittening idea. But I’m getting tired of it.
Some of you say, well, it is not ANet’s fault if someone goes afk, stops playing or disconnects. This is true. They are at fault however, for allowing a game which is 5v4 from the get go, to start. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to intentionally deliver such an experience to 9 people. None.
In any case, there are some very simple things that ANet could do – if they cared to spare their customers the frustration of such an unpleasant experience, or at least try to mitigate it:
1) Add an audible alert to the game entry pop-up window.
There is an audible alert for when you receive mail, for when you succeed in a new achievement, for when you level – even after level 80…but none for when players who have been waiting in a queue are about to be pulled into a match where the absence of a single player ruins the experience of the other 9? This is quite simply unbelievable, outrageous and to be honest, downright disgusting.
2) If teams are not full when the match timer hits zero, extend the timer by X minutes. If they are still not full at the end of that time, kick everyone back to the lobby.
3) Add a reporting tool for afk players. If a person receives 4 afk reports within a 5 minute period, lock them out of PvP for 1 hour. For every such report set/infraction after that, increase the lockout time by a factor of 4. Reset/clear lockout timer every 7 days. Such reports can only be accepted by team-mates.
4) Rank Loss
Players that are infracted for AFK or disconnect suffer PvP Rank loss of some amount.
5) PvP Lockout
Players who are infracted for AFK or disconnect more than 5 times in a week are locked out of PvP for 1 week.
The first 2 of these are simple, highly reasonable and should be done without question. The 3rd is less simple but also reasonable, and the last 2 are strong but not excessive methods of discouraging these actions. I would ask ANet to very strongly consider some or all of these very acceptable things to help their customers avoid the experience that effectively nullifies not only their reason for playing this game type, but playing this game entirely. If not, I would at least like them to explain why they want their customers to continue having this negative experience…because there has to be some reason, and I don’t see it.
Seems simple and trivial, but anet does not allocate enough developer resources to program these game logics in for sPVP. Maybe next year. PVE > WvW > sPVP
And how exactly will this reporting tool not get abused?
I’d rather get a personal blacklist to keep me from getting put into teams with certain players.
And how exactly will this reporting tool not get abused?
Easy, just do it how WoW Battlegrounds does it:
1) Player gets reported AFK by their teammates
2) Player gets a message “you have been reported AFK, please resume activity within the next 60 seconds”.
3) If player remains AFK, they get kicked and punished accordingly
4) If player resumes activity or they were never AFK to begin with, they will be immune to being reported AFK for the rest of the match (or at least 5 minutes to avoid report-spam).
Simple. In fact the game already has a similar message for disconnecting idle players from the server: http://i.imgur.com/EeqT21A.jpg
I’d rather get a personal blacklist to keep me from getting put into teams with certain players.
Lol, now THAT would be abused because anyone you considered a newbie (or you didn’t like) would end up on your blacklist. Within a few months literally HUNDREDS of players will be on each others’ blacklists and it would become harder to form teams. Eventually forming teams will become impossible (or we’ll have 1 hour queues) and solo PvP will be dead in the water.
Nice idea.
(edited by Wintel.4873)
Huge waiting times and a dead scene sounds like the current state of pvp, atleast that way the few matches you get will be a bit more pleasant, you could just put a 10-character limit on the list or something.
Wasn’t aware of the WoW system tho, sounds like it works fine.
There should be no auto log in to matches (you should have to accept manually) and if the match is 4v5 after the countdown it should end. Is it that hard? The afk people are even worse then the people who somehow never load in. How does that happen by the way? Does somebody log off during the countdown to a match? Are people that disrespectful of others?
It’s not only that these 5v4 matches start that way which is frustrating, but that despite countless threads asking the questions Kwill has asked – what causes these matches in the first place – ANet has not bothered to explain. This is like adding insult to injury basically.
In any case, if they aren’t even doing the most basic things – audible alert, moving the ready check, kicking uneven team matches back to lobby – sadly I don’t think they care to do them, and no amount of pleading from their customers will change that.
The only way at this point to motivate change would be through something they do care about, such as the cash shop income….I pre-ordered this game, I’ve bought a lot of gems, but I simply can’t support it further with this kind of failure to address real issues of importance. At this point I frankly don’t know what else to do.
And how exactly will this reporting tool not get abused?
Easy, just do it how WoW Battlegrounds does it:
1) Player gets reported AFK by their teammates
2) Player gets a message “you have been reported AFK, please resume activity within the next 60 seconds”.
3) If player remains AFK, they get kicked and punished accordingly
4) If player resumes activity or they were never AFK to begin with, they will be immune to being reported AFK for the rest of the match (or at least 5 minutes to avoid report-spam).Simple. In fact the game already has a similar message for disconnecting idle players from the server: http://i.imgur.com/EeqT21A.jpg
I’d rather get a personal blacklist to keep me from getting put into teams with certain players.
Lol, now THAT would be abused because anyone you considered a newbie (or you didn’t like) would end up on your blacklist. Within a few months literally HUNDREDS of players will be on each others’ blacklists and it would become harder to form teams. Eventually forming teams will become impossible (or we’ll have 1 hour queues) and solo PvP will be dead in the water.
Nice idea.
That report is useless.
Why not just ‘if someone does nothign for 60s… they get punished…’
No one should not click any button for a minute in a match and so the whole report deal is nothing but excessive.
Reporting should only exist if someone is trolling, like they are just lol’ing around spawn, not quite AFK’ing but still not contributing…
(edited by garethh.3518)
The solution is to stop worrying about your Solo Arena ranking.
Better yet, delete it altogether from the website.
No matter what measures ANet takes, Solo arena will forever remain a PUG fight and should never be considered “ranked” in any sense.
Unless they change it to 1v1.
It’s not about the ranking. It’s about the quality of the experience. 5v4 matches defeat the purpose of playing the game, any game, period.
The solution is to stop worrying about your Solo Arena ranking.
Better yet, delete it altogether from the website.
No matter what measures ANet takes, Solo arena will forever remain a PUG fight and should never be considered “ranked” in any sense.
Unless they change it to 1v1.
Ok, thanks for the elitist team only matters nonsense coupled with almost zero understanding of why people are complaining. I guess I should just grin and bare it as my team gets anal probed for 10-15 minutes because we are down a man. It goes far beyong leaderboard rank although that is surely part of it.
Simple way to fix 4v5s like i said in another post. Game pauses for both sides. Anotehr solo Q is pulled into the match. The game counts down from 10 and play is resumed. Easy fix and will solve the problem.
Simple way to fix 4v5s like i said in another post. Game pauses for both sides. Anotehr solo Q is pulled into the match. The game counts down from 10 and play is resumed. Easy fix and will solve the problem.
Then what happens to that person’s leaderboard ranking if he gets thrown into a 400-200 match on the losing side?
I suppose it could just not “count” if you come in mid-match. I’m just trying to think through how to make that work.
Simple way to fix 4v5s like i said in another post. Game pauses for both sides. Anotehr solo Q is pulled into the match. The game counts down from 10 and play is resumed. Easy fix and will solve the problem.
Or they just do the same thing as MOBAs.
After 10 people for a match are found, everyone will get a ‘click to join match’ button. If everyone joins it starts, if not people who didn’t accept get dropped form que and the others get re-qued with higher priority.
It’ll mean, those people who aren’t there at the start of the match… won’t get thrown into matches…
It’ll mean, the only other cause of 4v5s, people who DC/leave after a match starts, can just be fairly punished by an ever increasing ‘can not que’ timer….
Bam.
Fixed.
(edited by garethh.3518)
I’d rather see a fix to the underlying problem that causes such uneven situations…on second thought, yea adding a Ready function is probably more probable/feasible.
Guess there’s still no real point in playing and trying to fight the windmills.
On a side note, Tera has a neat way of dealing with such things.
After a group has been created from randomly queued up players accross all servers, each player receives an invitation to join the room. If they do not respond within 1 minute, they are automatically removed and the system looks for a suitable replacement.
Such a system would likely increase the wait times, but it’s either that or an 8 min match with only 4 players. Also, it could prove somewhat counterproductive in an environment with dwindling player numbers. Still better than the alternative though…I suppose.
/shrug
(edited by KarlaGrey.5903)
they should apply a temporary solution to this 4v5 situation, such as buff all party member (including AI) in all aspect by 25% for each team member missing.
Yes I know this is not gonna help to win the game, but at least it may make it balance a little more. At least you feel you can have a chance to win in 1 v 1 and take a point.
The solution is to stop worrying about your Solo Arena ranking.
Better yet, delete it altogether from the website.
No matter what measures ANet takes, Solo arena will forever remain a PUG fight and should never be considered “ranked” in any sense.
Unless they change it to 1v1.
Ok, thanks for the elitist team only matters nonsense coupled with almost zero understanding of why people are complaining. I guess I should just grin and bare it as my team gets anal probed for 10-15 minutes because we are down a man. It goes far beyong leaderboard rank although that is surely part of it.
I don’t play team arena. I play solo arena and hotjoin and I don’t care about my rank. If I end up in a 4v5 I shrug and either play it through if I’m up for a challenge, or drop out if I don’t feel like it.
My point is, there is no way you can make solo queue “serious”. Even if the teams are 5-5 there is no telling if your side will still be “anal probed” as you put it because you happened to be put into the same game with noobs or people who AFK.
So either stop worrying about your rank in solo arena or go “serious” and play team arena, where you can be sure the guys in your team are giving their a-game, just like you are.
Again, some people such as Tom Gore don’t get it – it’s not about rank, nor is it about losing. It’s about having an enjoyable experience, not one which is frustrating by default when a match starts 5v4. tPvP is what you play when your team is on and you want to win, but sPvP exists for a reason, and people are going to play it – period. There is no reason whether some people feel sPvP should be played or not, for the game mechanics to be such that those who DO choose to play will have an unpleasant experience DUE to those mechanics.
There are a lot of good simple ideas in this thread, and there are many basic things that could be done to mitigate this problem. This too is an important point. It’s not about prevent 100% of uneven matches, or punishing all leavers or AFKers…but basic things like not starting matches that are 5v4, moving the ready check, adding the audible alert to match window pop-up…these things WILL reduce these painful matches by some amount, at a very low cost effort wise…and this is the question; why does ANet not do these things? Why do they not even acknowledge the problem, or address it at all?
Presumably, because they feel as Tom Gore does – that sPvP is not a serious game mode, and no-one should play it. If that is the case, they should simple remove it. Of course, tPvP has the same issues as sPvP from a mechanics perspective…so that is no solution at all.
ANet needs to do these basic things, if they expect people to believe they care about PvP, if they truly care about the quality of their customers play experience, if they are to be believed when they claim to want to provide a good quality, enjoyable game….because this issue is real, these solutions are easy, and not saying or doing anything is all anyone needs to know.
It’s a bit weird this is even a problem when GW1 didn’t have it. Don’t get me wrong, there were still leaving issues, but the matches only started when both team ques were full.
To bad Anet just doesn’t want to put the resources into PvP that it does into PvE. I mean holy cow 4 PvE teams vs temp PvP team.
You mis-remember krak.
Matches started 4v3 in random arena quite commonly. (being the only mode like solo queue).
Difference was it was random arena and no one gave a kitten.
People give a kitten about solo-queue because it has a rating system tied to it.
Moving the start of the match is not a solution either. Many people are already kitten ed off by the 2 minute timer at the start. I can only imagine that moving the clock forward if all players are not in the game would only cause more leavers and would make the queue even more deserted it is now.
Yes I agree solo arena should not exist or it should be unranked.
I repeat, there is no way to make a “serious” solo queue. It just does not work, because people are people, period.
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