Guild Wars 2

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

This is a strawman… Nobody say it is fun to be wrecked. I sure as hell didn’t even implied it. Heck, I was on Mag until a few days ago so I sure know a little about it… I merely said the strategy is unsustainable and, if applied by all, would amount to nothing on top of being boring to death in an arguably worst way than being rolled over while fighting.

Translation: guys fight hard to get wrecked in T2 while I transfer myself out of it! Endure your predicament while I leave mine! The hypocrisy and the justification coming from you is just sad.

Nobody ever said the strategy had to be applied by all, so this is a strawman on your end. The situation right now similar to a Nash equilibrium where optimal strategies are mixes of things. And as I’ve said before, this is not a self-regulating system. If things get bad enough ANet will come in and intervene. And, frankly, that’s what quite a few people here want to see.

We’re all well aware of the collateral damage.

None of us (or you, apparently, by switching servers) is willing to be a martyr and take the suffering for everyone else. This is a video game after all.

ANet deserves all of the scorn for repeatedly making circumstances ideal for tanking, and not making the adequate adjustments to prevent this in the future. These structures are in place to support selling gems and server transfers (you should know all about this), and so they will get the bad with the good.

tl;dr—We will not be martyrs for you. The ball is in ANet’s court, not ours.

EDIT: Your MAD situation isn’t applicable here. Our “nukes” are not that destructive nor that permanent, and ANet has the ability to intervene. We’re happy to nuke and continue nuking so long as the status quo is in place.

I’ll let this speak for itself.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

It’s always amazing to see just how much people are willing to rationalize to preserve their ego.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

BTW, I changed server because Mag would no longer even try to fight, not because we were loosing and were outnumbered all the time. If loosing or winning was so important to me I would not have endure so long and gone through the last 2 seasons knowing from start that we would never have any hope of winning. It was fun being in Mag. It really was. But at some point things have changed quite a bit in the community and I finally decided that if nobody would care I could still decide to put up with the kittenty attitude or be done with it.

I understand it is not fun to feel judged and that I do judge here, sorry, but it doesn’t change what I’ve said nor the value of it. I’m pretty tired of the mentality several of you uphold and the problem it causes in communities. Heck, I went away from Mag in part BECAUSE of the collateral of the tanking strategy. I didn’t wanted to go away from my friends and pay 1800 kittening gems to take a chance of finding a better community. It was just THAT bad for too long and these macro-manipulations as a “solution” to the real problem is a joke. You solve very little by adopting this strategy except postpone the inevitable at the cost of putting quite a lot of stress on the server’s community.

As far as the relevance of the links, they call into question your moral high ground and the validity of your judgment, which is why I and others will and will continue to ridicule you when you continue to pass said judgment. If you still don’t get it, send me a PM for elaboration.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

It’s always amazing to see just how much people are willing to rationalize to preserve their ego. A-net sure has it’s faults in this but I hope you guys realize you are part of the problem too… Be the change you want to see in the world is something too few apply apparently (not just aiming you btw).

Must be nice to be so judgmental.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

“No I would never do that myself!”
…
zap

Have fun on Magu…owait you jumped ship and changed servers!

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

What I truly find hard to believe is being willing to actively avoid that forever. Once the tourney will be over the same problem will remain… This “solution”, isn’t one.

Tournament has rewards so the stakes are higher.

The word “tournament” makes it look a lot more serious, and is one of the prime times for players and guilds to come and go.

Tournament locks teams with no chance of moving back down after a week.

Many would be okay being stuck in a bad spot for 1 week, but not 4 weeks. It’s probably the tiers and locks more than anything. The reward structure and calling it a “tournament” don’t help either.

Reverence.6915:

Watching the tanking going on right now is sad

It’s very exciting for us, as it means this won’t be the actual score in 4 weeks when the tournament happens!

Chris.3290:

Are you really all so dainty that the prospect of losing is that terrifying?

Looking at the balance, you guys have a nice rotation of different servers winning.

I would take losing to a server in my own tier a lot rougher than losing to a server 1-2 tiers higher.
You know you aren’t supposed to win and every small victory matters a lot!

Holding a waypoint through the night vs SoS or JQ; beating a T1 chesthumper guild in open combat; winning a couple rounds against HOPE in a GvG…

Those are things you can take away. I know on SoS I’d much rather say “we lost but we sure bloodied JQ quite a bit, made them play overtime to win it”; than just beating Fort Aspenwood again.

Sure is nice to say that at the top of T2 eh? Why not offer these words about “moral victory” to encourage your friends in Maguuma? “You can win if you believe you won!”

Will you double our tickets if we come to you as walking bags? No? OK we’ll see you after the tournament then!

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I apologize if I do come down as passing judgement. Despite my intent I can only agree that I am doing so. I totally agree with the idea argued around the social contract. It is how it should be: a TRUE meritocracy (not possible but we should still strive toward it nonetheless). In fact, I argue the same IRL.

The part where “the end justify the mean”, however, is not something I’m so easily adhering to for a lot of reasons that I will leave aside. Still, I was more interested in empowering ppl in ways that has less negative impact on others. Sure, tanking is a strategy that can achieve a desired result but it has collateral damage to not just other servers, but to yours too. Trying to find fun it the game itself rather than in it’s externalities has less negative impacts for others while aiming for the same goal: fun. It is what I wanted to expressed. I did so poorly, but it was the intent behind it all.

No apology needed, only acknowledgement.

As far as collateral damage is concerned, many on this server felt Dragonbrand as a whole was collateral damage last season. Further, this server felt it would continue to be collateral damage in the next tournament unless it acted to change its fate.

“One step backwards, two steps forward.” This is basically what the server is doing. Many, especially in America, will prematurely dismiss the idea because of its associations with a naive ideology, but its concept is very valid and applicable here.

Swamurabi.7890:

If DB/YB/CD all decided to take next match off would their glicko scores all drop because their match scores were lower than the expected totals or would they all stay relatively the same since thier glicko scores are close?

CD seems to be trying to win this week for whatever reason, or their karma train is just that much better than ours. Glicko looks virtually zero-sum within a matchup so if we had a 3-way tankfest next week they would be generally unchanged. If anything, everyone’s rating would move closer to the average as one server would be doing (very slightly) better than expected and one would be doing worse.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Nice try but this has nothing to do with egocentricity which I could accuse you of too btw. It’s about the consequences of playing the way some do and how damaging it can be for them and the community (what I said was mainly aimed at the WvW community not just me btw). Not all “ideals” or “beliefs” are equally “damaging” to a community or your desire to play. Trying the “all opinions are as valid” route is fallacious. They are not. We are sharing opinions here, which is our right to do, but some are a lot harder to defend then others.

I have never criticized your beliefs. My only criticism is your imposing of your beliefs on others and judging others based on your beliefs (of “fun” and “reward” especially). You are free to call me out on egocentricity, but I challenge you to back it up.

I think our position is easy to hold and defend. There are even multiple avenues of doing so.

• The social contract is broken. Reward should be directly proportion to effort. This is not only not directly proportional, but is not even a flat line. Instead the relationship is an inversely proportional one.
• The ends justify the means. Season 2 was not even or “fun”. T3 WvW right now is very balanced and fun. This server has a choice of no fun for the next few weeks or no fun in Season 3 when things matter more.

None of the people tanking on Dragonbrand are disallowing the rest of the server to try. We are just making sarcastic jokes about how bad this server is and has been at tanking. They are free to continue, and you are even free to encourage them to try even harder now that the challenge is greater for them. After all, you said 1v5 in sPvP would be a fun challenge, right?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I rarely felt “punished” by defending and it can be very rewarding in terms of fun (the only currency that should matter). As for the “poor” people playing something they don’t like, are they mentally challenged or masochist? I hate EoTM and would never forced myself into it no matter if there are achievements and better loot.

If you want a better example of WvW “punishment” try trebbing a T3 alone for 20 minutes (making you instrumental in the objective capture) but getting ZERO reward, not even bronze level, because no NPC were killed. That sux big time. But even THAT is a choice I make that can be “fun” if I like playing an important part that benefit the server. My reward is the sentiment to have done what needed to be done.

PvErs force themselves through this crap so they get nice looking skins. Again the ends (weapon skins) justify the means (choring through something boring and, in Dragonbrand’s case last season, hopeless)

Your egocentricity is getting really tiresome though. You have your own personal beliefs and ideals, and, rather than think about those of others, you choose to impose your own beliefs as the only way and judge others for not following them.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

A-Net does share responsibility. It is true. It’s the part where ppl won’t even try if there is no external carrot that I find sad.

There’s a difference between “no external carrot” and being punished. In the context of defending in WvW, one is like “great job keeping watch and deterring the enemy, here’s nothing for your efforts!” while the other is closer to “great job keeping watch and deterring the enemy, we’re now taking 5 gold from each of you!”

Also keep in mind a lot of the players who participate in these tournaments don’t find WvW fun in the first place.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

No wonder the world circle the drain…

You act as if it’s completely our fault. When the system tells you “we’ll significantly punish whoever of you in this group (T3 level servers) tries the hardest” you can bet that people on those servers stop wanting to try and have the same feelings toward ANet that you’re expressing to us.

The ends 110% justify the means, and there is nothing ANet can do to punish the server that is worse than the outcome achieved by “trying hard”. Perhaps you could focus just a bit of that outrage toward them as well.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Too many play to win instead of playing as winners regardless of end results. If your server is so full of people who will only play if they win it might be good news for you if they go elsewhere…

When rewards are involved all bets and honor are off. We may not change your mind but there is no longer any guilt in manipulating the outcome taking a break from WvW for the next few weeks.

Deli.1302:

Most of those guilds left when DB dropped back down to T3 after the tournament. And they transferred to T2. Now you know where DB wanted to be. The only ones that wanted to be in silver were the ones that wanted to faceroll the tournament and get easy achievements.

Nice convenient narrative you got there. Yes a lot of the server was initially proud of being in gold. It took less than a week for that to turn to hindsight and regret. At least we seem to be learning. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

As far as the guilds who transferred, are you talking about guilds like the ones who transferred to SoS? They were looking for “good fights”, too, yes? It’s clear where the good fights won’t be in Season 3.

Elegie.3620:

My policy is to block any player uttering insults to any player, and not only myself. When I mean insult, I certainly don’t mean the usual “noob” or “l2p”, but way harsher things. I play up to 20 hotjoin games per day, hence my possibly long list of blocked players.

You’re entitled to think I block wrongly – but I’d like to kindly remind you that blocking policies are personal, and that my blocking someone will not make you happy or unhappy, only myself. If I feel pain at reading insults, then it’s my right to block the originators of this pain. Do you really contest that?

DaveGan.8065:

If we just used the standard block list, what would stop me or anyone else from blocking every inexperienced or bad player I encountered to ensure I only get paired with decent ones?

That’s the very point: why would you not do it, and rather spend 10-15 minutes of not having fun? I actually have no problem with a player blocking another one because of his perceived level (¹). Players should definitely be accountable for their own blocking policy.

Well, at least you’ve shown consistency in your view that all of those things would be acceptable. My main issue would be people who felt entitled to block “trolls” but then cried outrage at others’ ability to utilize the same rules to their own advantage. Since you don’t exhibit this hypocrisy, my posts apply not to you but to those who do/would.

At the same time, I don’t feel you “block wrongly”, but I have not yet gone ahead and equated (interchanged) blocking someone from chat and blocking someone from your matches. I do still see a meaningful distinction there.

This said, if such a rule really became reality I would like the ability to automatically block any player with an active block/veto list over 20-50. I have no interest in playing with someone who might perceive kneejerk levels of offense and proceed to cut off communication at best, and spite the entire team at worst.

Elegie.3620:

Why not use the standard blocking list? When I block someone, this is for a definitely good reason, and I’d rather not play at all than play with someone on that list (or against such a person, as you have judiciously pointed out).

Because while you use it for “a definitely good reason”, many others will use it for less pure ones. This might be a bit harsh (although I won’t apologize for it), but if you are blocking that many people with the desire to never see them again (rather than temporarily seek relief from them) then the problem may not lie entirely with those players.

If we just used the standard block list, what would stop me or anyone else from blocking every inexperienced or bad player I encountered to ensure I only get paired with decent ones?

EDIT: If you want this taken to extremes, guilds or groups of friends could distribute a do-not-include list of all inexperienced or bad players so that entire groups would have them on block. There are undoubtedly plenty of “hardcore” players who would be more than happy to have the power to exclude as many “casuals” as they could block.

style.6173:

I predict a buff to lich form. The balance team does the opposite of what players expect.

New minor trait! Your projectile skills move 100% faster and are immune to blind, block, and reflect.

Perhaps a compromise would please all sides in this debate? (except, of course, for ANet, who would have more work to do implementing “new content”)

Create a PvP “veto list” that can hold up to 1-5 (up to further discussion) players so it is not subject to excessive manipulation/abuse. Additional stipulations may have to apply, though.

If the matchmaker assigns you and someone you have vetoed into the same match, it will be you, not them, who is replaced from the roster.

If, after 5-10 minutes, the matchmaker cannot create a match without including both of you, then it will temporarily ignore the veto.

Before someone brings up switching the two so you’re on opposite teams, it would completely defeat the purpose as it could be used as a “veto or play against” measure simply to ensure a player under your standards will not play against you.

Issues with the tournament itself:

Why are servers grouped into Gold/Silver/Bronze again? The rewards are based on 1st/2nd/3rd every week in the particular matchups and have nothing to do with leagues.

4th (and 7th, 10th, etc) place rewards 100% more than 3rd (6th, 9th, etc) place. 5th place rewards 50% more than 3rd. A lot of non-WvWers have no interest in placement, only reward. If you can’t get 1st or 2nd place, of course the optimal course of action is to aim for 4th and 5th.

Deli.1302:

DaveGan.8065:

Deli.1302:

Why would you want to be in Silver League and get no good fights when you can be in Gold League where you will be bags galore?

Fixed

So you are incapable of winning a real fight. Gotcha. Now I know why you want to be in Silver. It must be more fun to fight doors and upscales

“Good fights” = Buygate and 2v1 scandals? Fort Bandwagonwood and Oceanic PPT Wars?

DB never belonged in Gold last season and the fights were horrendous. The only reason we were in that position was because other servers tanked harder.

Here are the last 5 weeks of T2 and T3 matches. I think it’s pretty clear why so few people here want to move back up to T2. You’ll have to excuse us if our definition of “good fights” does not match yours.

Enjoy your loot bags, but certainly not from us.

Deli.1302:

Why would you want to be in Silver League and get no good fights when you can be in Gold League where you will be bags galore?

Fixed

Stora Ge.9207:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

1) There is no way to prove that a ser er is tanking. So banning without evidence is not something Anet will do.
2) Even if you look at the result, they may say that they are taking a break. You can’t prove otherwise.
3) You can’t force people/guilds to WvW. It’s completely upto them.

As I mentioned, in the case of DB, it is very provable. Simply look at the chat logs from WvW. You’ll see guild leaders saying not to siege, not to cap, and describing the events of the “server meeting” where the decision to tank was made. I agree with (2), you can’t prove it based on score. I’m not talking about making people WvW, just the cases where there is hard evidence that a large proportion of the WvW participants are trying to lose intentionally.

Punish this “match fixing” retroactively and there will be no players left on any server. Declaring that you will start enforcing and punishing will simply make it so you never see these conversations in chat…or guilds/commanders in WvW. You know something is up but you don’t know what or who exactly, and anyone can claim that they “weren’t feeling it” for the week.

Also, looking up at your original post again, lol @ punishing HA match fixing in GW1. Take a look at obs mode. Only way to win nowadays is to fight your own AFK alts, and that’s exactly what people do. Rupt bots? Heal bots? AFK leech bots? JQ bombers? Yeah let’s keep cherrypicking ideals from the cesspool reality of GW1 PvP.

EDIT: So I went to check the maps just now, this is what I saw.

Do you even understand why servers like Dragonbrand are tanking? Sorry but no thank you to another WvW tournament like Season 2. #6 in Gold league because other servers managed to out-tanked us on their way to silver. Were it not for the ticket fiasco we wouldn’t even have a weapon skin. This server learned its lesson last season by not tanking hard enough.

This is the kind of mess you get when you have coverage wars, a slow-moving rating system, bandwagon servers, and rewards heavily dependent on performance within a league/matchup.

Kurr.4179:

If you don’t understand how this and the foxfire bans are different, then this discussion is over.

I was very vocal in my negative feedback towards ArenaNET for the foxfire bans.

Please enlighten me. You’ve hinted that it was because it was a mass ban, but how do individuals know about the magnitude of it unless they discuss it outside of the “recommended avenue” of support tickets?

How does this player realize her ban was a single case or a mass ban from power-hungry GM with a vendetta against sellers?

I’d appreciate if you could address some of these points, but it may be even better if you follow through on your claim that “this discussion is over”.

Kurr.4179:

It’s not bias, I just decided not to reduce myself to a mad animal in the presence of anything ArenaNET says or does that is not perfect in my eyes like a lot of people do. They made a mistake, they fixed it. The Foxfire ban was atrocious and they got a lot of negative feedback for it. This was a single case. It’s not “community blow up” material. It’s support ticket material.

And if you really don’t want to believe in their support system that’s your own decision. Worse come to worse if the ban wasn’t overturned by support THEN they could’ve posted the image/negative feedback. And let’s be honest if they had been refused by support they would’ve posted about it since their goal was to smear ANet’s image as much as they could for the mistake.

Foxfire bans were overturned within hours. Why? Because people went beyond the “recommended” avenue of support tickets and stirred up a massive scene on forums. Accounts got unbanned days/weeks faster. People who would have given up and uninstalled got their accounts back right away. Don’t be a hypocrite now too. Either dismiss all of them for their “childish” actions or realize the same thing applies here.

Also think about why this mistake would have been made. If it was any of inexperience, malicious feelings toward sellers, or chemically induced imcompetence, then this is likely not the only ban that happened.

Before you turn up that passive aggressive “mad animal” bit to 9000 take a look at my post history in this thread. I posted nothing up until “ANet can do no wrong” white knights came in and started defending and justifying the situation.

Kurr.4179:

Completely wrong. Gaile is by far the most active ArenaNET employee on the forums and is constantly reviewing tickets for every issue. The person would’ve gotten unbanned one way or another, they just chose to do it the childish way.

Don’t get me wrong, getting wrongfully banned would kitten me off too and I may not take the most logical course if it happened to me but mistakes happen and the support system is there for that.

And the feedback things are unrelated to this.

And if Gaile was just as shallow and dismissive as Chris? Or fed bad information from this employee trying to cover up his mistake? Or if banned player did not have friends who would help advance her cause on the forums?

No screw that. ANet deserves any and all public backlash they get from false positives (lolfoxfireclusterslol). It’s the only way to deter more false positives in the future, and ensure those committing them get their justice (or at least learn/get trained to be more careful).

Claiming unban would have happened even despite all of this misinformation coming from the employee. Assuming support tickets were not filed. Your bias is painfully obvious and agonizingly useless.

Kurr.4179:

DaveGan.8065:

Kurr.4179:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Anet provided wrong screenshot.

The mystery behind the screenshot? GM said “Legit” to the banned person then teleported to a second instance for a second check, thus time dif (which is the SS with that asura ele).

There’s 3 minute difference between the screens. GMs probably move fast I imagine especially if they can just teleport from one instance to the next.

Either way ArenaNET has the info and if it was a wrongful ban it will get appealed. There is a support forum for such issues if you feel you were unfairly banned. I guess that doesn’t get him the attention creating a scene with photoshop does though…

Photoshops seem to be increasingly necessary when people like Chris dismiss these claims with shallow arguments like “you’re posting on the forum, obviously we didn’t ban you”. Posting a screenshot with mismatching professions isn’t helping either.

I suspect Chris is serving as merely a relay being fed misinformation from at least one of the parties involved, but the bias is not helping him (or ANet) any.

Chris addressed it because the person was trying to stir up a scene instead of going about through proper channels (submitting a ticket). The blame is entirely on the user trying to create drama for a potential mistake.

I suspect “instead” is actually “in addition to”. Given the attitude shown by the ANet employee in game, and Chris himself, this may have actually been what saved the account.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s clear the only way now to get real legitimate action and attention is to force it. The recent developments with WvW commander tags, influx of red posts in this very subforum, and this incident itself only serves to cement this idea.

Ball’s in ANet’s court now if they want this status quo to change.

Kurr.4179:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Anet provided wrong screenshot.

The mystery behind the screenshot? GM said “Legit” to the banned person then teleported to a second instance for a second check, thus time dif (which is the SS with that asura ele).

There’s 3 minute difference between the screens. GMs probably move fast I imagine especially if they can just teleport from one instance to the next.

Either way ArenaNET has the info and if it was a wrongful ban it will get appealed. There is a support forum for such issues if you feel you were unfairly banned. I guess that doesn’t get him the attention creating a scene with photoshop does though…

Photoshops seem to be increasingly necessary when people like Chris dismiss these claims with shallow arguments like “you’re posting on the forum, obviously we didn’t ban you”. Posting a screenshot with mismatching professions isn’t helping either.

I suspect Chris is serving as merely a relay being fed misinformation from at least one of the parties involved, but the bias is not helping him (or ANet) any.

pzyonix.1645:

Dave: I (and I believe quite a few others here) took it personally because you came here with a very clearly perceived air of superiority and condescension.

You clearly missed a point here. Air of superiority… Condescending… That is just outright offensive…
Final word as I am not going to waste more time explaining this…
A LOT has changed both in the game AND the playerbase in 18 months… You are talking about how it WAS which isn’t exactly up to date…

I believe I worded my post correctly, take none of it back, and certainly don’t apologize for any of it. I called out for sounding condescending with an air of superiority. While this may not have been your motive, I don’t think many others here will disagree that they perceived your posts the same way.

Furthermore, I’ve been back for about three months now so your last sentence is a failed poke at my credibility. In that time I’ve caught right back up to the meta in terms of builds and strategies for most of the encounters.

You’ve said that it was your last post so I wish you well and hope you follow through on it. We don’t need more of this same warped and uninformed/condesending black and white narrative.

pzyonix.1645:

>>We want to play with people who equate “optimal” and “challenging” with “fun”, not with “work”. Every opportunity is made to reach out to “casuals”. But we’re not going to go all the way to them; they need to take a step forward themselves and meet us in the middle. We will lead them, but we will not and cannot grab their hands and pull them.<<

This is also my view, so I don’t get it why you seem to take this personal.

I (and I believe quite a few others here) took it personally because you came here with a very clearly perceived air of superiority and condescension.

Your general agreement with that quoted statement is proof that the issue is far less black-and-white than your posts have made it seem. Different people will go different lengths to reach out to casuals, and will try to reach them in different ways. The LFG window is a pretty shallow way to look at the big picture.

EDIT: Full disclosure: I’ve actually been out of the game for about a year and a half, and I’ve never actually taken the time to learn Arah. I would never even dream of joining a non-casual Arah on the LFG at the moment because I know I am a casual when it comes to that.

Additionally, just to clarify, I do not filter anywhere near as much in my own searches. I simply write something like “pX 80/exp/zerker/huehuehuehuehue” and take whoever comes. I don’t gearcheck, I don’t enforce things after people join, and I suspect many others also use it more as a deterrent than enforced law. At the same time I would never fault anyone for wanting to choose (and enforce) his own shade of gray on the scale of casual<—>hardcore.

pzyonix.1645:

That is just making an exception for non-casuals to be allowed gaming with casuals. Also… a casual gamer isn’t by definition an unskilled/new player, just a different type of player. Hardly discrimination, but exclusion which might even be worse.

I guess I am blessed with my ability to play the game with all kind of players.

Some of them totally forgotten that it is a game they play, and not a job they have…

First off, please stop with the egocentricity and ridiculous moral high ground. Personally, I have a degree in math with further background in computer science and statistics. Has it ever occurred to you that doing and discussing calculations and spreadsheets (and implementing them of course) might be something I enjoy?

Some others (and also me included) would like to get good (read: better) at whatever they do. We get to choose our entertainment (what makes/keeps it fun), but we will still approach it with a competitive attitude.

We want to play with people who equate “optimal” and “challenging” with “fun”, not with “work”. Every opportunity is made to reach out to “casuals”. But we’re not going to go all the way to them; they need to take a step forward themselves and meet us in the middle. We will lead them, but we will not and cannot grab their hands and pull them.

“But it’s fun, not work”
“But I don’t want my immersion ruined by knowing what to expect”
“But I’m casual and these hardcore players should carry me through the content”
“But this content is so easy anyone can do it so everyone should accept me”

No, it’s not that we won’t take you (casuals) for your inexperience. We won’t take you for your attitude and carefree indifference toward getting better.

pzyonix.1645:

To me, it is, with all respect, the unforgiving mass of players that don’t want to assist new players into the game, so that one day they have the same skill as the one kicking them from party. The elitists in diva behaviour, AP-checkers, the verbally abusive towncriers and commanders obey-me-or-uninstall folk, that are pretty much making every map or event, unwelcoming for the new and uninteresting for the veterans.

No. Just no.

Look at DnT’s website and youtube channels. Full of guides and videos. Look at [rT]. Comprehensive class guides on dulfy. [KING]. Videos. Wethospu. GW2Dungeons.net. Dungeon Mentors [Noob] guild. This community is all about helping others improve. They just won’t take it. Then the excuses responses we get when offering help in game too:

“Man it’s just a game stop taking it so seriously”
“Kitten off with your stupid advice”
“I didn’t ask for help you kittening kittenkitten”
“You think you’re better than me, giving me advice?”
“I play how I want”

This game caters to a casual crowd. It’s okay, we get that. They may not enjoy playing with us, and some of them have yet to realize a lot of the more dedicated players won’t enjoy playing with them.

We say, okay, we’ll establish our group as not casual, and they’re free to have/start their more casual groups too.
They say, OMG DISCRIMINATION CALL 911 CALL YOUR LAWYER CALL OBAMA

Geiir.7603:

I’m in favor of either taking away all damage immunity skills of any sorts the ability to contest points, or give those skills and stealth the ability to contest. I mean, if a thief stealths and you don’t decap/cap then there isn’t exactly much space where the thief possibly can be, so how hard can it be to keep pressure on him with AoE damage, cleave or some cc? Just my two cents.

Can we shrink the circles on Legacy (and most middle circles) then?

dutchiez.7502:

I don’t think calling people immature for voicing their opinions is very mature (get it?).

I don’t think you were called out for what you said, but how you said and continued to say it.

Are you thinking that you’re entitled to be sheltered from being told that your continued participation in this discussion is detrimental?

Ehecatl.9172:

DaveGan.8065:

It’s because Skyhammer (and leaderboards to a lesser extent) is viewed so negatively that people are willing to accept losses in a rated match when they see it. Your teammates knew fully well what they were doing, and accepted the consequences of doing so.

The alternative is for them to put in 1% effort while pretending to be new, or spam suicide pretending they have lag or are bad at dodging.

The alternative was to suck it up and play anyway. The consequences for their actions didn’t just hurt their own ranking, it hurt the ranking of the few teammates they had that actually cared about the match, as well as ruined the enjoyment of said players within the game. It was childish and selfish.

This is awful behavior and should be discouraged.

Nobody said they were saints. I was saying there’s basically nothing you can do about it except improve/remove the map. Meanwhile, it seems the energy directed in that direction may be bearing fruit.

There is always a minimum amount of effort required, and right now it is just enough to not be labeled AFK by the game. Without a subjective view, these players are playing the game within the rules, so just as intended. Even with a subjective view, bad play can be made to look like inexperienced play. That’s not a can of worms you want to open.

Be careful how far you go, though, because the rules will apply to everyone. It would be difficult to distinguish Alt-F4 from DC, so any policy that affects one will undoubtedly affect the other. A tPvP group being unable to play together for 3 days as a result of a single disconnect would be rather unfortunate, especially if it was a top team.

EDIT: as far as hurting ranking, so long as you play the map yourself there is kitten .6% chance of Skyhammer AFK boosting your ranking vs 44.4% chance of it dropping it. That is not a valid argument.

It’s because Skyhammer (and leaderboards to a lesser extent) is viewed so negatively that people are willing to accept losses in a rated match when they see it. Your teammates knew fully well what they were doing, and accepted the consequences of doing so.

The alternative is for them to put in 1% effort while pretending to be new, or spam suicide pretending they have lag or are bad at dodging.

Bunker seems to be used in at least three different contexts. There are some obvious overlaps between them.

• Point defender: a class that can keep a point until help arrives. Tanky or sustain setups work well here. Stability and stunbreaks help against getting decapped as well. Can also be a class that is strong in 1v1 fights, especially against thieves.

• Any tanky or sustain class. Overlaps a lot with point defender, but may not have the stability/stunbreaks or 1v1 potential.

• Team fight support: someone whose main role is to be a pillar in team fights, granting boons, heals, condition removal, stablity, blocks/reflects, etc.

Darkk.3018:

Good posts, but you don’t put forward any ideas of your own on how to fix the fundamental issues surrounding hotjoin. I won’t repeat my ideas here as I agreed with others who you disagreed with on the other thread via my own posts there, so I know what your reply will be.

Did you actually read my posts (and the thread) from the start? Or did you get the impression that I must be some out-of-touch elitist and continue to follow that narrative?

I put out one very obvious condition: the 500-200 rank reward gap (and corresponding reward track progress) does not reflect the casual nature of hotjoin and turns it much more competitive (and unbalanced) than it should be.

But the truth of the matter is this: hotjoin will bear the brunt of the rank farmers because ANet does not want them going and spoiling rated arena matches.

I also think that ideas that were dismissed by you in the other thread would have at least discouraged negative behaviour in hotjoin.

I dismissed them because they all said to stop there. They frantically and rabidly pointed at spectate mode abuse while ignoring the stacking and 5v4 situations, many a result from reward disparity and focus on winning, that led to them in the first place. I said it then and I’ll say it again here: 5v5 matches can’t be abused with spectate mode. Stacking would continue and would even get worse, as there would be one less way to counter it.

Xli.7629:

those who dc because of ddos, i m sorry about that but its better to catch the wrong guy than letting the noobs get away.

“It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world, that all of them cannot be punished…. when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, ‘it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.’ And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever”

This quote is attributed to John Adams, but it is far more useful here to think about the quote itself than the person who was quoted.

Darkk.3018:

That’s a brilliant idea! But I do hope the devs might think otherwise Perhaps to improve on your idea a bit (or just for even better ideas!) you should take a look at this thread? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Spectate-Mode-should-be-removed-from-Hot-join The issue has been discussed much more over there

You do realize I’ve been one of the main participants of that discussion right? I’ll tell you what I’ve told others in the other thread as well: shallow solutions will have you right back here crying for more change for the sake of change.

Darkk.3018:

tanztante.6532:

i still don’t see the issue here….

The issue is that people stack at the beginning of matches on the higher ranked team. They do this by going spectator mode and checking player’s ranks so if they see at the start it’s a 1v1 between a r10 v r80 they will clearly be tempted to join the r80 creating a 2v1. What happens can be that people don’t want to join the r10 and would prefer to hope for a space on the other side. This leads to issues such as people just spectating and not joining in and leaving the game at uneven numbers or matches of low ranks vs high ranks. I see this on a daily basis when I play.

Removing rank will not fix this. The r80 has the Legendary Champion title and a dragon finisher. Should we remove those too?

Why does the spectator exploit bother you so much?

In particular, why is it more bothersome than 4v5 and team stacking?

Here’s the sad truth to this: hotjoin is a sacrificial lamb, given to these exploiters so they don’t farm rank by AFK/semi-AFKing rated matches.

Anything that tips this balance, even slightly reducing the reward, risks tipping the scales and setting the meta back to leeching arena loss rewards.

Rank farm servers isolate these people from the rest of the player base. The progression in custom games isn’t even that much compared to actively playing Solo Queue or Team Queue unless you’re really bad or really laggy.

On the other hand, if you really want to slow their progression, take the current 300 bonus points for winning and cap it at something like 5 times a day. Yes it’d hurt the “hardcore hotjoiners” but that term really shouldn’t even exist.

It’s almost impossible to nerf them without taking a sacrifice. Are you willing to accept either crappier games (with the farmers in normal games) or reduced/capped rewards?

PS: your last suggestion (disabling reward tracks) would create a wall bigger than the legendary/precursor grind for most players not already into PvP. That’s exactly the opposite of what they were made for (getting more people into PvP). They’re not fast to complete in hotjoin/custom servers at all, and people doing them in arenas is good, not bad.

Zaxares.5419:

Reiven.2543:

Your suggestion that players should get more points based on what they did would bring the game a step backward and back into the era where points were based off individual score. Under your suggestions, 5 people could cap the same point and get rewarded for it. This is NOT what we want. The idea of Anet to make the game based off win/loss broke this “zerg” mentality up.

Is that really so bad though? As many other people keep bringing up, “it’s only hotjoin”. It’s meant to be the place for casual PvP’s or newbies to get their feet wet where having fun is more important than winning. Solo Queue and Team Queue is where it’s more about winning, and strategies there alter to match. Hotjoin should be the place where you have multiple-man caps and everybody getting into a 10-man brawl at the orb. (There’s a reason why Courtyard never shows up in the ranked PvP modes, for example, and yet every single time I see Courtyard in a custom arena rotation, it almost always seems to be full.)

Yes, it is. It would create an even more toxic environment where the more experienced players get even more frustrated as newer and newer players are taught increasingly more bad habits.

If winning isn’t so important in hotjoin, and you want a completely casual atmosphere, the first thing to do is address the 500-200 reward cap to reflect this. Change it to 400-300, 300-200, or hell make it a 200 point participation reward (possibly with a 1500 point participation bonus after 5 daily matches).

It’s one thing to make hotjoin indifferent to bad tactics (multi-capping/zerging/flipping points), but quite another to actually encourage it.

Removing rank from spectator would be a step in the right direction, but in the absence of that people will just put up their rank-earned PvP titles/finishers to achieve pretty much the same effect.

Until stacking and imbalance are addressed, players will either wait in spectate or continue with the “stack on me, not against me” mindset.

It’s a step in the right direction, but I’d say it’s a tiny step and the community deserves much more at this point.

Unfortunately people will simply start using their normal PvP rank finishers again to distinguish themselves.

The side effect of this is that it will also drastically drop sales of ANet’s gem store finishers.

Liewec.2896:

its not trolling, its exploiting, while i agree that i don’t realistically think anet will ban people for it, the question needs to be asked, why not? why not investigate it and throw out temp bans to discourage exploiters, or better yet, why not fix it?!

Serious question: are people who rank stack (or sit in spectate trying to join one team) not exploiting just as hard and deserving of this same temp/perma ban you speak of?

I guarantee imbalance in hotjoin will become worse if all you look at is the spectate/autobalance issue. If ANet’s stance becomes that they condone stacking then more and more people will no longer have any issue exploiting that for maximum gain (before they themselves get exploited).

Current reward structure makes it so leaving a match early enough is a negligible sacrifice in rewards for the chance to imbalance another server for an easy win. The side effect is that simple skill/rank imbalances snowball into number imbalances (5v4/4v3) that never get filled.

The first step is for ANet to realize that in hotjoin, wins are not worth 250% the reward track progression of losses.

ens.9854:

I believe the biggest culprit for creating 4v5 games are AFK spectators preventing anybody from getting directed to the game to fill the last spot.

They need to account for this or start reducing the number of active servers and making players wait for an open spot

I’m starting to think now that most players aren’t entering through “Play Now” but simply picking a server with less than 10 players inside.

Unfortunately that makes this issue considerably harder to solve.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Its still match manipulation so they should be at least temp banned for it.

It’s the blatant trolling that stands out to me more.

But playing devil’s advocate, are people stacking teams one-sidedly guilty of the same match manipulation (arguably moreso since they are often the cause of the imbalance problem)? The ones that sit in spectator mode until the team with their friends/high ranks becomes available, or the ones sitting in spectator mode until some sucker joins the other side in 3v2/4v3?

How far are you willing you go to enforce match manipulation? If you’re going to do it for one case, perhaps it needs to be enforced for all.

ANet designed hotjoin to be a casual balanced PvP environment (evident by the use of autobalance, etc), so there is a social contract here. The current imbalance is a pretty noticeable violation of this social contract so players in turn have little obligation to uphold their end.