Guild Wars 2

Dear ArenaNet,

as everyone is aware, 4v5s are a big big problem right now in SoloQ. I am not going to exaggerate on numbers here, but in my personal experience at least 1 out of 10 games starts as 4v5 (in my team’s disadvantage) and another 1 out of 10 games starts 5v5 but with a person AFK for at least half the match.

In reality numbers will be higher because the other team experiences the same issues, though it can occur that each team has one member missing and the disadvantage gets ‘cancelled out’ but let’s just make a safe estimate that 30% of games start with an unfair advantage on one of both teams.

This is of course way too much. Everyone hates to lose, but losing because of a disadvantage like this can be really dissapointing especially when you are trying hard to climb up the ladder. I do think though that quick and easy solutions are available that can drastically reduce this issue, because the dishonorable-buff obviously is not doing enough right now (it helps I am sure, but just not enough!).

Games with AFK people: The reason people start a match AFK is because queuing right now takes somewhere between 10-15minutes. People walk away from their computer, are doing other things, browse on the web, and forget that they are in queu, or don’t come and check often enough. Would it not be possible to have a sound played when the queu pops and the Guild Wars 2 game screen trying to take foreground (the Guild Wars 2 icon would start flashing in taskbar). I think it’s safe to say that this would solve most of the problems on AFKs.

Games that are 4v5: I think this one is a little more tricky. People have suggested a real ‘Ready’ button, and let the game only begin when everyone has pushed it. I think that people would fake-AFK/disconnect if they see strong opponents, and if a person was really AFK then the game would never start. I feel that when the counter reaches zero and both teams do not have 5 people, it should kick the person that has not been able to make it into the game, restart the counter and choose a random player who is in queu at that moment, it doesn’t even matter if he does not fit in the rating of the other people, everyone prefers a random player over a 4v5.

If people have other ideas, please post them here and let’s have a constructive discussion! And please try to keep this thread free from hate and trolls.

Thank you for your time and have a good day!

James Megawatt.9021:

Dear ArenaNet,

as everyone is aware, 4v5s are a big big problem right now in SoloQ. I am not going to exaggerate on numbers here, but in my personal experience at least 1 out of 10 games starts as 4v5 (in my team’s disadvantage) and another 1 out of 10 games starts 5v5 but with a person AFK for at least half the match.

In reality numbers will be higher because the other team experiences the same issues, though it can occur that each team has one member missing and the disadvantage gets ‘cancelled out’ but let’s just make a safe estimate that 30% of games start with an unfair advantage on one of both teams.

This is of course way too much. Everyone hates to lose, but losing because of a disadvantage like this can be really dissapointing especially when you are trying hard to climb up the ladder. I do think though that quick and easy solutions are available that can drastically reduce this issue, because the dishonorable-buff obviously is not doing enough right now (it helps I am sure, but just not enough!).

Games with AFK people: The reason people start a match AFK is because queuing right now takes somewhere between 10-15minutes. People walk away from their computer, are doing other things, browse on the web, and forget that they are in queu, or don’t come and check often enough. Would it not be possible to have a sound played when the queu pops and the Guild Wars 2 game screen trying to take foreground (the Guild Wars 2 icon would start flashing in taskbar). I think it’s safe to say that this would solve most of the problems on AFKs.

Games that are 4v5: I think this one is a little more tricky. People have suggested a real ‘Ready’ button, and let the game only begin when everyone has pushed it. I think that people would fake-AFK/disconnect if they see strong opponents, and if a person was really AFK then the game would never start. I feel that when the counter reaches zero and both teams do not have 5 people, it should kick the person that has not been able to make it into the game, restart the counter and choose a random player who is in queu at that moment, it doesn’t even matter if he does not fit in the rating of the other people, everyone prefers a random player over a 4v5.

If people have other ideas, please post them here and let’s have a constructive discussion! And please try to keep this thread free from hate and trolls.

Thank you for your time and have a good day!

In my experience, the higher up you go up in rating, the less matches you have that start 4v5, but you still get plenty of AFKers which can be incredibly frustrating. I like the idea of a “true” ready button that would be required to be clicked in order to start the match, and if everyone didn’t click it, the match wouldn’t start and either everyone re-enters the queue, or the match is stalled until another player can be found.

You mention people performing a fake AFK to get out of competing with players that that they didn’t want to play against, but I think a simple solution to that would be to not let players see the competition, only their teammates. It may cause more leavers during the match, but hopefully that could be resolved in some way through better punishment.

Also, I hear everyone saying queue times are 10-15 minutes, but I really haven’t experienced this. I usually play at 10 p.m. EST however, and the queue is usually between 3-5 minutes. I have had 15 minute queues but that was when i had first began playing soloQ. Either way, more players would be the solution to long queue times, it’s just a matter of attracting them to sPvP, and tPvP in particular.

Just my two cents. Oh, and good post btw.

I love how people say when you get “higher” this happens less.

That is like saying, well when you get wealthy, you won’t have to beg for food.
How am I supposed to become wealthy if every system in my world is currently keeping me poor?

How am I supposed to get higher when i am being dragged to the bottom based on things out of anybody’s control?

Divinity.8041:

I love how people say when you get “higher” this happens less.

That is like saying, well when you get wealthy, you won’t have to beg for food.
How am I supposed to become wealthy if every system in my world is currently keeping me poor?

How am I supposed to get higher when i am being dragged to the bottom based on things out of anybody’s control?

Sorry if I offended you. I was simply stating to OP that from my experience the higher you go, the less of it you see. That may not be true for everyone.

I didn’t mean to imply, or think that I did, that it was easy to go up, nor did I imply that he would. I was just stating that it appears to be less of a problem higher up. Yes, the current way the system works, it is difficult to “rise through the ranks,” mainly, I think, due to the reasons discussed by OP.

Ironically, if you are an honest player that never leaves matches, then your rating on the leaderboards will profit from leavers.

1.) afk-people is an issue since the very beginning, not only since you wait longer for queues to pop.

2.) how will it be less of a problem by higher rating if matchmaking confronts players from every ladder rating against each other?

a solution to afk and 4v5 could be a change in matchmaking like this:
– queue solo
– search for 9 equal players
(- wait (20sec or so) for everyone to click ready | if else goto line 2)
– randomly form 2 teams of those

I have to agree here. My last 5 matches where all 4v5 and it was such disappointment that I haven’t done much this week in solo tourney matches. Seem as if this happens more now then it did before the patch where they addressed people who left. bummer really!

the worst is when i heard someone saying, just one more of these and I get my daily….i was like are you freaking serious?

we lost by 400 points that game, we would have done better if he was actually afk

Divinity.8041:

I love how people say when you get “higher” this happens less.

That is like saying, well when you get wealthy, you won’t have to beg for food.
How am I supposed to become wealthy if every system in my world is currently keeping me poor?

How am I supposed to get higher when i am being dragged to the bottom based on things out of anybody’s control?

I don’t think that’s even true. Today I played 3 games, the first one was fine, the second one somebody left halfway trough the game and in the third one we had one AFK the whole match. And I have been bouncing between rank 100-200 for a long time now, and I really don’t think it is much better then when I was at the bottom.

FirstBlood.7359:

Ironically, if you are an honest player that never leaves matches, then your rating on the leaderboards will profit from leavers.

Yes, mathematically speaking, as long as you are not the leaver yourself, you should benefit from it. But really, that’s not what this game is about, I don’t want to win a game because the opponent has a leaver. I want to have fun in a game an either win or lose but I want everybody to have a fair chance. Today I don’t feel like playing anymore because we lost 2 times due to AFKs. If I had lost a fair game, I wouldn’t be feeling so bad about it and would still be playing.

And if the devs think I am exaggerating about the times I lose to AFK, please check my report logs. I report every AFK for scamming, because that’s what they do, they scam the match. And I can’t even report 4v5s so believe me, the numbers are high.

These ragequit-players should be heavly punished.

It is really FK bu11sh1t to play matchs with 4v5 or 3v5 all day long. The ragequit-issue makes Arena not interesting AT ALL! ArenaNet must do something RIGHT NOW!

Ewwwww!! I’m so angry cause i just play a 4v5 match about 5 mins ago.

You make a lot of valid points and to be honest fixing people who go afk is pretty hard, so theres inevitable going to be some of that, and to the person who said its to do with rank i’m rank 70 on leaderboards and it happens to me too a lot so rank has nothing to do with it. but to be honest my worst problem is when people are in a game and just stop playing cause they lost a 1v1 or cause they think others arent playing at their lvl, people who stop playing in a game should get punished, the past couple of nights ive had games where when things dont go exactly right for certain people they just stop playing even though a win would just take a tiny bit of effort, im suggesting we should be able to report for leeching, its very unlikely you can win with 4/5 but if you do then the person who has decided hes too good to play in this game will get a free win when they did nothing but complain.

On 4v5s:
It’s hard to change people’s habits and the AFK/disconnect issue is not going to be solved by enlightening players.
Besides making the notification easier to see/hear, the “queue pop” mechanic has to be modified so that failing to acknowledge the pop-up will grant the place to another willing and able player. It shouldn’t have been auto-join once submitted.
Doesn’t have to be a waste of anyone’s time if you set a limit of for example, 30 seconds to confirm. Even if you load late by 15 seconds into the game, it’s infinitely better than 4v5.
On SoloQ in general:
I still see games with stacked r40-50s+ on one side and r10-20s+ on the other. It will be almost always a waste of 10-15 minutes for the inexperienced team, due to factors such as class knowledge, player skill, map rotations, etc. It has occurred on a frequency enough to be noticed. Matching up games solely by leader board rank, I feel, is not perfect design and should be looked into.

Played 6 games today. Lost one of them 499-500 with one person afk half the match. Also won one match where the other team had only 4. Please fix this

Yesterday I had again two times 4v5. I am losing a lot of ranks due to this, went from 65 to 140 due to these two losses. Please fix

James Megawatt.9021:

Yesterday I had again two times 4v5. I am losing a lot of ranks due to this, went from 65 to 140 due to these two losses. Please fix

Just wondering, is it actual 4v5’s, or someone is AFK causing a 4v5?

I seem to mostly get 4v5’s due to AFKs and not due to it actually being only 4 people on my team.

If I ever get a true 4v5, its usually someone who has gone through the trouble of entering the match, and then just leaving, which is incredibly frustrating. However these true 4v5’s are rare for me.

The first one was actually a person, after dying alone at far (while we called in chat to play close/mid), who said, f*k this, i’m afk. The second one started 4v5.

Unfortunately, although it would make you happy, to automatically kick the afk guy, and then have the timer start over, would be immensely time consuming.

Scenario: You wait the timer. One person gets kicked for being afk. Timer starts over. Match begins.

Scenario 2: You wait the timer. One person gets kicked for being afk. Timer starts over.
“Omg i’m not waiting for another”, player goes afk. Player gets kicked. Timer starts over. At this point, everyone goes afk, because there is nothing to do before the match begins other than just sit there and wait for it to start.

Better system would just be a vote-kick system, and for the game to take somebody from the queue and throw them in your game. Maybe a -game pause, searching for player- and the points stop ticking away and everyone is placed back to spawn.

Caine.8204:

Unfortunately, although it would make you happy, to automatically kick the afk guy, and then have the timer start over, would be immensely time consuming.

Scenario: You wait the timer. One person gets kicked for being afk. Timer starts over. Match begins.

Scenario 2: You wait the timer. One person gets kicked for being afk. Timer starts over.
“Omg i’m not waiting for another”, player goes afk. Player gets kicked. Timer starts over. At this point, everyone goes afk, because there is nothing to do before the match begins other than just sit there and wait for it to start.

Better system would just be a vote-kick system, and for the game to take somebody from the queue and throw them in your game. Maybe a -game pause, searching for player- and the points stop ticking away and everyone is placed back to spawn.

I was thinking instead of the the “Go Now” option, there would be an “Accept/Reject” button. If you accepted, you would be put on the roster for the match, but not immediately ported into the arena, you would simply still be out in the open world doing whatever it is you’re doing. Only after enough players have chosen “Accept,” will you enter into the arena and be placed on teams.

If you were to decide to “Reject,” you would leave queue, and the system would continue to search for players before placing everyone on a team and into the arena. That way you could continue playing while you’re waiting, and not have to sit in the arena waiting for another player.

The only problem with the vote-kick you mentioned, is the fact that you’re voting during the match(unless I misunderstood). This would mean whoever gets thrown in from the queue could potentially be put into a game where the score is lopsided and is unrightfully put onto a winning/losing team. Not to mention unrightfully kicking people who you just don’t want on your team.

resign option after 250 points or 50% time. That is all

Played 3 games today, two of them were 4v5….

Again, upon 3 matchs, one is 4v5 from start, and the last i had 4 r15 players against r40+ team( one of my team even raged half match after failing his 1v1, while we were leading..)

+1 win + 2 loses i went from r80 to 135… That means :
- either i lost a lot of points on the last match, which means the system isn’t really working
- either i lost a lot of points on the 4v5, and that should be adressed. A match where there are 4 players from straight shouldn’t drop rating so much..

Anet this is the best thread I have found with the most Constructive feedback in the most recent pages on forums. Take some of these ideas and help SoloQ evolve!