Title says it all. I’ve never posted before but feel strongly enough to warrant something being said. For a few days it was a blast. I originally thought it was some kind of ninja patch that wasn’t necessarily asked again and again for but seemed to be working out for the best.
Before the downtime of spectator mode players would join one side, then because of some recognition delay in the system, switch and stack the other side while the system still thought there were x amount of players on the original side. The result was a lot of 8 v 4, 5, 6’s allowing the game to become a ROFL stomp fest from the start and making a competitive game extremely difficult to attain even once completely new players joined or the re-balancing happened. Not much fun. Another thing players were doing were waiting on other players they recognize as ‘good’ to see which side they would join before joining that team themselves, thereby ‘stacking’ that side anyway. Too many games ended up having the same few people on teams because of it. This didn’t always work out in their favor of course, but once that ‘team’ lost, the process would pretty much just repeat itself.
While the spectator mode was disabled for a fix however, (which I later learned was the reasoning for the apparent unintended awesomeness) these types of problems went away. No longer was this stuff allowed because it would automatically put you on a random team. The result? The most fun I’ve had in spvp as a solo q’er since I started playing and a lot of other players I talked to agreed. The matches were now fairly close, people seemed to be playing together more, the zerging and/or base camping wasn’t as much an issue if any anymore, animosity was lessened and over all it was just good times imo.
After the fix was completed though, the difference was instantly noticeable once everything reverted back to its original state. Spectator mode was re-enabled with the same rules as before, allowing you to choose your side, leave to go to another, and stack to your hearts content again. The result? Not as good. Same things began to happen again without missing a beat.
I think I got spoiled by the way things were for those few days because its no where near as much fun as it was. It’s almost like I got a taste of what things were supposed to be like and am having trouble adjusting back to something that feels off.
I say, if it’s possible revert back to how things were when spectator mode was disabled with the random joins but still have spectator mode so you aren’t automatically put into a game at the end of matches. Basically just a simple join button which places you on whatever team needs filling out. I always did enjoy the relaxed vibe of being able to get up and do whatever after, before or during matches, including simply spectating while in spectator mode, so this feature is very much a must have at this point xD. The ability to pick and choose sides especially after matches have already begun though, is not a must have and I think these 3 days kind of proved to me that there are better ways.
I’ve been around enough a bit to read forums and understand generally how they work, so I fully expect the usual ‘but I want to play with my friends" among other things bit. I will simply say, they have tournaments, servers, WvW, and pretty much the biggest collection of options I’ve personally ever seen in an mmo for pvp, which is great. All I’m asking is to just leave hot joins as hot joins.
What do you guys think? Anyone feel the same way?
(edited by zolemn.8219)