Guild Wars 2

since we cannot stop people from joining the winning team each time an auto balance occurs, how about we give some handicap to the team with more players? this only seems fair since they have more players.

introduce a new effect, say name it “bully’s handicap” or something better

*Bully’s Handicap"
- Deal 20% less damage to the team with less players.
- Receive 20% more damage from the team with less players.
- Player kills award 2 points.
- One team point is gained every five seconds per location captured.
- Svanir and Chieftain Utahein awards 10 points per kill.
- Ascending Spirit Orb awards 10 / 5 points instead of 30 / 15
- Guild Lord awards 50 points when killed.
- Meditation takes twice as long to capture.
- Control points takes twice as long to neutralize and capture.
- Team respawn wave is 40 seconds instead of 20 seconds.

all team members on the team with higher score and more players will receive this handicap effect.

if the players so much like to stack on the team with more members, they might as well be fighting with some handicaps since they have one more player than the other team.

discuss, please.

I don’t think it has to be this complicated.
All they really need is to make hotjoin distribution random again. But why do you even play hotjoin so much? Queuing for team queue is so much better… Even solo, and even when you lose.
The other solution is to make a “balance queue” that only puts you in the game when someone else joins other side. But you can still exploit that by spectating. Maybe force you to spectate/join without easy switching and wishing to do so forces you to leave the server etc.
All in all, old hotjoin interface is best. Makes it harder to stack and “vigilantes” trying to flip teams by themselves won’t need to work so hard.

About your suggestion:
It’s like giving everyone Celestial?
Just like with the amulet itself, some classes can utilise everything better (hi Cele D/D)…

Ralkuth,

for myself, i dun play solo arena because
- long queue time
- toxic community (or so i heard)
- 4 vs 5
- skyhammer
- sometimes, i need to immediately stop what i am doing and deal with matters in real life.

in hotjoin, i can away from keyboard for a short while before returning without much serious consequences but to do that in a rated match (solo arena) is not a very practice.

with hotjoin, after i click the “play now” button, i am thrown into a fresh game. nowadays i find myself clicking the “play now” button more often than going through the game browser, since the “play now” button often shoves me into a fresh game, where players are starting to pick sides.

unfortunately, i noticed many games start off with 2 vs 1 with many spectators waiting.

regarding team arena, my previous team arena buddies have found new team arena buddies who can play more regularly together with them, so my presence in their team is no longer required, and i am happy with hotjoin anyway, except for uneven team problems 4 vs 5 all the way, 2 vs 1 at the start of matches, etc

well, yeah "Gain 300 points to all base stats.” does sounds like giving everyone an extra celestial amulet.

what if it is "Gain 25% points to all base stats.” instead?
or 30% or 33%

they just need to remove or fix team select and spectate
removing would take no time at all.
improving them with restrictions shouldn’t be too hard either,

leaving it to fester in this toxic condition is just evidence of their total and utter incompetence and lack of caring.

Liewec,
removing / fixing team select and spectator mode does not prevent 5 vs 4 situations from happening. unless they made it so that attempting to join the winning team will automatically join the losing team.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Liewec,
removing / fixing team select and spectator mode does not prevent 5 vs 4 situations from happening.

sure, but it would happen less, and when that 4v5 happens everyone wouldn’t just camp spectator and wait to join the winning team.

people would be assigned to teams as they join (as it used to be), and spectators would only be allowed to join the losing team regardless of if they both have the same amount of players,
the choices would be join the losing team or don’t join at all.
this would encourage them to actually join rather than cowardly waiting to join the winning team, meaning less 4v5s.
although it could result in 4v5s in favor of the losing team, which imho could be a good thing.

ofcourse they could take the time to put in some "if"s such as this rule not apply unless the winning team has 4-5 players.

regardless, it is incredibly discouraging that NOTHING has been done to even try and fix it.
we can put out as many ideas as we like, they won’t fix the issue, ever.

If bothering to implement something like this... why not just do any of the other suggestions made, that would actually fix the problem rather than serve as a band-aid? Buffing stats doesn’t add anything like the usefulness of another player, and the only way it might be useful is if it’s OP.

- make hotjoin rewards equal for win/loss, so that anyone joining after the start of the match can gain just the same rewards if they join the currently losing, outnumbered team, whether or not they win
once this exists and people know about it, it’ll be common knowledge that you get *less* loot if you camp in spectator mode waiting for a spot on the team with a higher score

- force random teams after the match has started
might help... but folks are still unlikely to join the team with fewer players, if they might instead get a chance at the other one by waiting

- reduce rewards, introduce a buff that doubles rewards for picking random team
someone suggested this in another thread, and it could work quite well. Similar to entirely removing the win/loss distinction between rewards, this makes choosing ’random’ guarantee maximum rewards, while picking a team to join may end up giving only loss rewards. Maximum rewards given would be capped at the win rewards for the amount of time spent in match.

- others?

Really, buffing stats will just make the already messy burst/bunker mess worse - and those celestials that are dominating right now will get crazy stronger, even with a percentage increase in stats rather than absolute values. It’s not a good solution, and it’s barely a practical sticking plaster solution.

I don’t know about that, Liewec… From my experience with other online competitive games, what usually happens then is that players on the losing team just immediately ragequit the moment they see they are losing. (Or they just afk because if you have no hope of winning, then why let yourself get stomped non-stop when you’ll get loser’s reward anyway?)

This then results in Autobalance happening anyway (after which the swapped player has a tendency to quit/spectate too, probably because they don’t know that if you get Autobalanced, you get the winner’s reward even if you didn’t volunteer), or in a worst case scenario, it causes a cascade effect where the entire enemy team quits. (I know that if I saw my entire team quit, I wouldn’t bother staying either.)

thanks Liewec, cheese and Zaxares for the feedback.
but Zaxares is right, 4 vs 5 will happen anyway, and people rage quit.

however, what if we punish people for stacking on the team with more players?
a handicap system.

we will make it such that, it is not worth their time to be on the team with more players.

introducing the …

*Bully’s Handicap"
- Deal 20% less damage to the team with less players.
- Receive 20% more damage from the team with less players.
- Player kills award 2 points.
- One team point is gained every five seconds per location captured.
- Svanir and Chieftain Utahein awards 10 points per kill.
- Ascending Spirit Orb awards 10 / 5 points instead of 30 / 15
- Guild Lord awards 50 points when killed.
- Meditation takes twice as long to capture.
- Control points takes twice as long to neutralize and capture.
- Team respawn wave is 40 seconds instead of 20 seconds.

the word bully seems suitable, because the team of 5 is obviously bullying the team of 4.

Yeah that’s just as bad, if not worse. The moment someone leaves the game, the other team is *screwed*.

If the match is 3v3, in a game designed for 5v5... who’s going to join the other team only to be hit with a huge debuff? It’ll just become a 4v3 until someone gives up and leaves, or the 3 is far enough ahead that people join that team, confident of a win.

It doesn’t solve the problem of people trying to choose teams, it just flips it on its head. And it actively discourages people from joining an even-numbers match.

There’s just no way that it can possibly be fair to modify stats of players... and it really doesn’t solve the problem.

We don’t want to discourage people from being on the team with more players, or incentivise being in the team that’s outnumbered.
We want to encourage people to play matches from the start, by making it not worthwhile to spectate then join the team that looks like they’re doing better. Also to make it worthwhile to join a team that’s behind on score partway through the game - making win and loss grant the same rewards, and making sure people know this, would likely deal with this.

but, cheese, the debuff only applies if the team
- is winning
- have more players

for example,
200 blue team vs red team 50
4 vs 4

if new player joins blue team, then blue team will have handicap.
if new player joins red team, then red team will have no handicap.

then it becomes
4 vs 5

then another new player would join blue team, and the teams would become balanced, making it a 5 vs 5.

uneven matches
2 vs 1
3 vs 2
4 vs 3
5 vs 4

is plain bullying , especially if the team with higher score has more players as well, and should be discouraged. i think giving some handicaps is fair.

And a much simpler solution along the same lines would be to just not allow players to join the team with higher score, when numbers are even. It accomplishes... pretty much the same thing, but doesn’t create massive balance issues or be at risk of getting exploited.

edit: minor clarification

cheese.4739:

And a much simpler solution along the same lines would be to just not allow players to join the team with higher score, when numbers are even. It accomplishes… pretty much the same thing, but doesn’t create massive balance issues or be at risk of getting exploited.

edit: minor clarification

yes, that has been suggested before, many times, i believe.

however, they (anet) have yet to do anything as simple as that.

one of the reason i’m proposing this outrageous handicap is to get some attention, hopefully. anyway it seems like a lost cause as well.

I still stick by my idea of giving players who pick “Random” when starting a match a special buff that doubles their end reward (up to the winner’s normal reward). This would mean that if a player wants the guaranteed maximum rewards per match, the best way to do it is to immediately hit “Random” the moment a match starts and then see it out to the end.

Zaxares.5419:

I still stick by my idea of giving players who pick “Random” when starting a match a special buff that doubles their end reward (up to the winner’s normal reward). This would mean that if a player wants the guaranteed maximum rewards per match, the best way to do it is to immediately hit “Random” the moment a match starts and then see it out to the end.

rewards wise, that would be good.
but team fight wise, not good.

5 vs 4 means the team fights are always not in the 4 man team’s favor.
not fun.