Guild Wars 2

Is “ALT+F4ing” a legitimate way out…? More and more in WvW Im seeing alot of people just rage log when downed. I run solo (Mesmer) or with a Guardian friend most of the time (we’re both 80) and even if we’re outnumbered and down a few of the enemy, alot of them choose to close client before either being ressed or finished off. Its poor sportsmanship and there’s no penalty for death aside from a small repair bill so whats the point in cheesing it and relogging?

Any thoughts?

It saves their pride. It’s like turning off your gameboy before losing a pokemon battle. They still lost but in their head, if you didn’t get the stomp, you didn’t win and thats all they’re worried about. They’ll take the repairs and the long run back as long as their e-pride is a-okay.

no repair cost actually, most people do it because theres no repair cost, nothing to do with pride.

I don’t know why repair costs are such a big deal in this game to people then. Considering you make money doing anything, anywhere. Sounds more like an excuse to me.

Probably, in part, because of videos like mine. Just cowards/bads trying to save face. Move along, nothing new to see here.

This can easily be solved by the devs changing a few lines of code to leave the character in-game until combat expires, regardless of whether the client was closed.

Maybe they are rebelling for having to deal with the downed mechanic.
If you think about it you could kill 2 birds with 1 stone here.
Remove the downed state from pvp and stop the alt + f4ers as well.

Playing GW2 is my way of rebelling against the healer mechanic. Downed state is here to stay, the system would need MASSIVE overhauling without it.

That aside, my only gripe with alt-f4-ers is depriving me of my badges. I have no problem with them opening the client and going through 2 load screens on top of the corpse run.

It’s got nothing to do with repair cost, it’s all about ego. How many times you see someone alt+F4 before they die in PvE?

It actually does two things, one minor and one major.
The minor- It strips people of the reward they should’ve received for killing said enemy.
The major- It strips a server of the point it would’ve earned by killing said enemy.

I’ve seen a handful of people do this, enough to make it annoying. There aren’t too many people for it to be an imbalance problem but it likely will work its way there if given enough time.

We just need a system that would penalize players for this poor sportsmanship.

It is not only about the repair cost but also stopping the other person from getting Badge of Honor. In addition, Badge of honor equals siege weapons or W3 armor.

It’s a way of denying skill less zergs satisfaction.

While, undoubtedly, many, if not most, occurrences of people disappearing from the game world in such a situation are due to people manually closing the client, don’t assume that, just because they did disappear, they Alt-F4’d. Games crash. New games crash frequently. I know my game has crahsed just as I entered combat or sometime during. That has happened in PvE, and, while I don’t recall the specific instance right now, I do recall “waking up dead” in Lion’s Arch upon logging back in after a crash in PvP. Crashes likely are only a minority of such instances, but don’t assume, just because someone disappeared before you could down them, that the only explanation is that they manually closed the client so you couldn’t defeat them.

People complaining about the downed state mechanic need to get over it. You haven’t won just because you downed someone. You have merely put them in a vulnerable state which limits their ability to continue fighting. Until you fully deplete their downed state health bar or stake them, you have not actually won. Getting up from a downed state is no more taking a victory away from you than is someone using their heal and regaining health before they get downed. Think of it like those extra miles you can drive after your gas guage points to “Empty.” You aren’t really out of gas, just in a vulnerable state where, if you don’t do something to fill your gas soon, you will be. As Mad Max would say, “He isn’t dead. He’s only mostly dead,” or, as the saying goes, “It ain’t over till the fat lady stakes him.”

Finally, eliminating the downed state mechanic would have no effect on people Alt-F4’ing. People have beeing doing this since games, especially PvP games, have been invented. EQ2 had a mechanic to keep people in the game world if they disconnected. It lasted something like 20 seconds, if I am not mistaken, and it was specifically there to prevent people from intentionally disconnecting to avoid death. It worked the same way in PvE and PvP because, contrary to another suggestion, people do try to avoid deaths in PvE. Even with that, people would exploit the zoning mechanics to avoid PvP deaths.

EQ2’s load screens had an exit button that was there to log you out if you got stuck in a loading screen. Yet, I specically recall someone bragging on the forums about how he exploited (he didn’t think it was an exploit, mind you) that mechanic in PvP (EQ2 PvP was open world and only on PvP servers) to get away from enemy players. He would zone, then hit the exit button to get out of the game before he appeared in the new zone. The downed mechanic has nothing to do with this practice.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

It actually does two things, one minor and one major.
The minor- It strips people of the reward they should’ve received for killing said enemy.
The major- It strips a server of the point it would’ve earned by killing said enemy.

I’ve seen a handful of people do this, enough to make it annoying. There aren’t too many people for it to be an imbalance problem but it likely will work its way there if given enough time.

We just need a system that would penalize players for this poor sportsmanship.

In WvW, you get points for the number of camps, towers, and keeps your server controls and whether or not your server controls Stonemist. However as far as I am aware, there is no tally applied to the score of the number of kills the respective sides have accumulated. It would affect an individual player’s PvP kills achievement, but it would have no effect on the server’s score.

In fact, if anything, if anything you could argue that it actually benefits the opposing server as it takes less time to get back into action by eating the death, teleporting, and running back than it does to reload the client, log back in, and, possibly, have to wait for a queue to get back to the same point. Even waiting to be rezzed if people can get to you would take less time than getting back from a client disconnect.

It may unfairly deprive the opposing player of a kill for his personal achievements (which is skewed anyway because that is not a count of soloed kills but, rather, a count of participation in someone’s death). It may unfairly deprive people of loot bags. However, it does not affect the opposing server’s score in any way and actually benefits the opposing server by taking the person doing this out of action longer.

Either way, the game should not penalize you for your client crashing or for a network problem. The better solution would be to keep a character in the game world for a set period of time if there is a disconnect. This would prevent people from using Alt-F4 to escape death without the need to penalize people who get disconnected through no fault of their own. If done right, it would reconnect you to your character object in the game world if you got back in soon enough, meaning you would not be knocked out of WvW and have to sit in a queue again just because you were disconnected by a client crash or other glitch. That is the better option in my opinion even if they cannot, for technical reasons, reconnect you to the character object and make you wait until it is out of the game world before you can log back in on that character.

People do strange things. Alt-f4 doesn’t stop you from taking keeps or camps, so what the big deal?

I am seeing this more and more and I really hope the dev’s acknowledge this problem and try to address it.

I like downed state and it’s here to stay…

But logging out in combat is the problem, and it’s strange that most games lock the character from logging nowadays, I was so surprise that GW2, especially for a PvP heavy game.

Oftentimes I give enemies the slip, using invisibility, blink, running around a corner then hiding behind a wall/in a cave while they run past, through my portal that they didn’t see (because I placed the exit in a cave, around the corner, etc).

Now I pretty much feel obligated to come back out and reengage so that I am not simply considered some alt-f4ing, character select dropping kitten. Even though I generally reengaged from a more advantageous position anyways, I didn’t used to feel like my honour depended upon it. Now my honour and my pride demand me to reengage after giving an enemy the slip.

Here in the Sorrows/Ehrmy/NSP doubleheader, this act of poor sportsmanship just seems like it is getting worse and worse, from all sides. [Edit]

It makes you mad, saves gold, makes downed mechanic useful for something, denies enemy badges, wastes enemies time, opens spot for someone to join wvw, makes them believe you are mad, and did I mention it makes you mad?

purpleskies.3274:

I am seeing this more and more and I really hope the dev’s acknowledge this problem and try to address it.

They have acknowledged it (cba looking for the dev post).

It will be addressed, the real question is when.

In the meantime, moral proclivity aside it saves you fixing your armour and deprives the enemy of a reward.

This behavior has become very prevalent recently (honestly I never even noticed it before this week). Last night in the EB jumping puzzle for example, we witnessed at least 15 different people do this throughout the night. I find it strange that people’s egos are so fragile that they feel the need to resort to d/c’ing, in PvP you will die sometimes – that’s just the nature of the game.

If you log out while in the downed state, you still have to waypoint somewhere to revive yourself…which is about the same as repair cost, so that’s not the reason they do it

it’s just an unsportmanlike dick-move…or they are ignorant, thinking they save money doing so

Anyone that does this is hurting their team more than the enemy, by taking a player off the field for a good 5 minutes…I lol when someone does it, their loss

Splintrr.7391:

If you log out while in the downed state, you still have to waypoint somewhere to revive yourself…which is about the same as repair cost, so that’s not the reason they do it

it’s just an unsportmanlike dick-move…or they are ignorant, thinking they save money doing so

Anyone that does this is hurting their team more than the enemy, by taking a player off the field for a good 5 minutes…I lol when someone does it, their loss

Not if you’re in a city…and considering the majority of people are probably in Lion’s Arch when they do WvW, it’s pretty likely they don’t have to pay anything.

Report those doing it and anyone advocating doing it. It’s an exploit of the system pure and simple, and these people should be made known to support.

Maybe with enough reports, we’ll see a change in the system sooner than later.

Something i don’t get is this.. The past few nights i have noticed when a friend of mine logs out, even though shes offline in the guild window, and i know she had logged out. Her character is still standing beside me in game for about another 10 seconds before it actually disappears.. How come this doesn’t happen when someone just x’s/alt-f4 or w/e out in pvp.. I mean forcing the person’s character to stay in game for another 10 seconds when logging out would fix this issue.

The ones I see doing this are embarrassed they lost the majority of the time.

One guy I found 3 times. First time he didn’t alt-f4 till he got downed. Second time he alt-f4’d at half health. 3rd time just he just straight up alt f4’d when he saw me (he was in combat, so couldn’t have been WP). Was pretty hilarious.

It’s a sterotype, but most of them are thieves that get their egos all bruised up when they lose to an elementalist.

until the developers make an official statement i will treat this as “working as intended” feature.

the original guild wars works like this as well.

well, they were rage quiters in random arenas in guild wars 1, arenanet sort of fixed that by adding a “leavers debuff” so repeating rage quiters will not be able to join back in the random areana until the debuff expired.

we will probably see a “deserters debuff” for rage quiting in WvW in the near future.

Raiza.6538:

Is “ALT+F4ing” a legitimate way out…? More and more in WvW Im seeing alot of people just rage log when downed. I run solo (Mesmer) or with a Guardian friend most of the time (we’re both 80) and even if we’re outnumbered and down a few of the enemy, alot of them choose to close client before either being ressed or finished off. Its poor sportsmanship and there’s no penalty for death aside from a small repair bill so whats the point in cheesing it and relogging?

Any thoughts?

Creslin.1758:

It’s got nothing to do with repair cost, it’s all about ego. How many times you see someone alt+F4 before they die in PvE?

People die in PvE? …

I put this in the same category as invisi rendering thieves and mesmer rendering portal bombs. it’s now part of the meta.

However if your moral proclivity is preventing you from doing this, then don’t do it!

I’ve seen it a few times. I just shrug and move on.

I have no problem with someone alt F4 ing if they get rundown by a giant zerg of people. I myself don’t do it,l but I understand the mentality.

With that said, I happened across a 1v1 in WvWvW. I am a Ranger and my enemy was a Guardian. We fought for a good solid minute and a half. The fight went back and forth a few times. I thought he had me at one point. But the overall outcome was him lying on the ground gasping for air. As i jumped up in the air to drive my banner through his haert and finish it….he disappeared.

Ok, now like I said, I understand the zerg thing. But after a good, long, and most importantly FAIR fight, why would you do this? This was the kind of fight I would have bowed after and run off. Why would you get taken down in a clean fight by simply being bested, if only barely, and not enjoy the moment? It was a great fight. You fought the good fight. Win some, lose some.

actually, if you cant handle the heat you shouldnt go there in the first place.

Every time you alt-4 out you say 3 things;
1. Im a loser that cannot handle the consequences of losing.
2. I cannot manage to play fair, thus making me a loser.
3. Im such a peasant I cannot afford to pay a measely repair cost.

Slic.2406:

Probably, in part, because of videos like mine. Just cowards/bads trying to save face. Move along, nothing new to see here.

This can easily be solved by the devs changing a few lines of code to leave the character in-game until combat expires, regardless of whether the client was closed.

… Please don’t. I was stuck in combat for a good 15 minutes once; whilst in a jump puzzle and couldn’t make ANY progress. I would be extremely annoyed if I wasn’t able to log my character due to a bug/glitch OR because I targeted an enemy that ran but I couldn’t kill them.

As a side note – I don’t care for an Alt+F4er – if they do it, good. Their server didn’t need them and they just freed up a slot for a legitimate player.

I do not believe in ‘punishing’ players with a debuff either, because things happen – issues in real life, need to go straight away (family emergency, work, etc), game crashing, computer crashing, windows updates in all their glory, etc.

I WILL Alt+F4 OR character select from WvW BECAUSE I don’t like being returned to Lions Arch if I was in a certain area in PvE. Character switching/Logging puts me BACK where I was when I was doing PvE and I prefer that. I think if you get downed though and you log, that is unfair and doesn’t show good sportsmanship. I think the player should still get credit for the ‘kill’ (even if downed state) when they log.

SoPP.7034:

I put this in the same category as invisi rendering thieves and mesmer rendering portal bombs. it’s now part of the meta.

However if your moral proclivity is preventing you from doing this, then don’t do it!

How can you say that a thief can exploit the rendering issue? My high end computer doesn’t have that rendering issue at all. What do you want us to do? Stop going in stealth which is one of the main mechanics for that profession?

On topic: one simple fix. Make the character stay in-game for maybe 30 seconds after quitting. There? Problem solved

Alisana.9451:

I WILL Alt+F4 OR character select from WvW BECAUSE I don’t like being returned to Lions Arch if I was in a certain area in PvE.

Just a note, you can accomplish the same thing by going to the Mists with the PvP menu, then leaving the Mists the same way. Will drop you back where you were in the world. I use this all the time, and restarting your game is slower than doing it this way.

I never would think of doing this. when I go down, i am too busy cursing myself for losing to think about anything but how I will handle the next fight.

most repeated exclaimation in wvw…..Ok that was dumb…..:p
second most repeated exclaimation in wvw… kitten mesmers!

I’d rather jump off a cliff (if possible) to die and deny the enemy badges. The only time I use Alt F4 is when my game client freezes for whatever reason.

Geiir.7603:

SoPP.7034:

I put this in the same category as invisi rendering thieves and mesmer rendering portal bombs. it’s now part of the meta.

However if your moral proclivity is preventing you from doing this, then don’t do it!

How can you say that a thief can exploit the rendering issue? My high end computer doesn’t have that rendering issue at all. What do you want us to do? Stop going in stealth which is one of the main mechanics for that profession?

On topic: one simple fix. Make the character stay in-game for maybe 30 seconds after quitting. There? Problem solved

Actually the rendering issue has nothing to do with the performance of your PC it’s on the ArenaNet programming side of things and something they are addressing

So much like invisi rendering thieves and mesmer rendering portal bombs the alt+f4 “trick” will be stopped/less affective once ArenaNet trouble shoot it.

One a side note:

Anyone think there will be a mass exodus of thieves once their’l33t’ skills will become less l33t?

They can fix this by adding a 10 sec or so delay from log out in wvw > till when the char disappears from the server… so all the people that can’t take getting killed fairly actually die and drop badges etc. Also remove or reduce repair costs (while this doesen’t bother me it can to those who don’t know how or don’t care to make gold farming etc.)

When I first heard about the downed state I knew it was going to cause all sorts of problems. Its a silly mode anyway, they should remove if your outnumbered anyway.

I have seen a few people do it, but not enough at the moment to be a major problem. We get stomped pretty hard on our server anyway. Although our set up is 1 Killer server, 1 decent but often smashed server (ours) and some other server that is often holding only one or two places, for a few minutes.

Although, I have been disconnected a few times whilst in the middle of a fight (both in wvw and pve) and logged back in to a corpse, so disconnecting seemingly wont save you, but alting out will. Buggers……

Well this is now being used as a tactic in WvW.

I was defending a tower west of garrison last night in ET borderlands and the ENTIRE ET ZERG was running out of the spawn, coming down the hill, hitting our siege, then immediately logging out and repeating in waves. The first time it happened we were all like “WTF? Did they just all disappear? Anyone see a portal?” but after the millionth time I think we figured out what was up. I don’t know if it was something they planned or if they were just screwing with us or what.

I’m still perplexed at how you get all those people to do that. “okay on 3 we hit the siege” “…AAAND… LOGOUT!”

Btw I am not saying this is a useful “tactic” and I wasn’t particularly angry about it, but it certainly was a “WTF really?” moment for me.

Finally had this happen to me, 1v1 on another Guardian, two others joined the fight after he started running from me. Downed him and he logged. Here I thought Guardians had self respect.

Chose to run, got outplayed and then logged. Whatevs.

Would help if we could see names. Anonymity makes it easy to do this lame stuff. That or it’s easy to fix by having them in game for 10 seconds like every other MMO that ever existed does.

The first time we started talking about this phenomenon in the tier2 (BT vs Elona vs Riverside)

Now it happens all the time: every other Frenchman who loses the duel makes logout

apart from not getting badges, I LOVE it when it happens, i get a huge grin on my face when i see them rage quit :P means i really affected the poor buggers, they think they won something but really they have to spend more time getting back into the fight

I’ve done it a few times. Not often, but when leveling a lowbie, if I felt a lvl 80 really went out of their way to be an kitten I hit char select before the stomp. Just dying doesn’t bug me, but if a group of 80s chases my boosted char half way across a zone to catch me, I don’t feel bad about denying them the kill. That’s worth more to me than a loading screen.

Anet should make it so you can’t do that, and I won’t miss it if they do, but until then, I’ll continue to use it when I feel appropriate.

allowing this seems like an obvious oversight by the devs…hope they remove it soon.

Have my fair share of people alt-f4-ing on me, they tend to be 1 on 1 fights. A few days ago an engi put so many stuff but I just turned on Lich Mode and clawed him down… I didn’t bother going back to normal instead kept firing away when he was down. And just before the last hit he vanished.

I have nothing to say about this kind of thing.. it’s just 1 less wvw kill and the poor fella would have to re-login, and if the map is full would have to queue..

The only time I even think about this option is when a large group decides to run me over when im out roaming solo. congrats, you took me out, removed me from the battlefield for about 20 seconds and forced me to go back to spawn. If you beat me one on one or kill me in a battle you deserve what you get from my corpse, going out of your way to Zerg me is another story.

This will get fixed eventually

ComeAndSee.1356:

It’s a way of denying skill less zergs satisfaction.

^this

I accidentally alt-f4’d once. I was chatting on TS (my TS key is ALT) and then I hit F4 to switch to Earth attunement. /facepalm