The option to spectate in hot joins should not be removed. I’ve been playing a ton of hot joins recently, so I understand why there’s a problem. However, I’d like to point out that this isn’t a problem caused by anet, so much as players deliberately making the choice to create a bad community.
One of the biggest problems isn’t spectating mode, its that you can view player’s ranks. I can’t even list off the amount of times I’ve just sat there to watch how many players ranked 40+ would only join one side, while the other side (losing side) is pretty much composted of players ranked 20 and under. Mind you, many players would make this decision before points in the game would even start to rise. I’m not sure if it’s more pathetic that these veterans only seem to want to play against rabbits, or annoying to attempt to fight on a team that doesn’t know what to do. Regardless, seeing ranks should really be removed.
I feel as though a good solution to this, as listed above, would be to have certain servers that only allow specific ranks. For example, when a new player joins heart of the mists for the first time, they’d get a prompt that might suggest a series of public servers. These specific servers would only allow players that are, say, ranked 10 and under. They’d still be allowed to play in other servers of course, but this would give them a chance to learn the game among players of similar skill or knowledge level. The same could be done with higher ranks as well, for those who might prefer a more competitive level without the queue times or restrictions of tournaments.
As far as losing teams being outnumbered goes, I’m not sure how one would fix that. I’d suggest a different type of auto-balance, that would kick a random player off the team into spectator mode if their team has more numbers for a given amount of time. They’d still receive as much exp as they normally would for whatever given time they spent in the match. This might discourage people from stacking on teams, but I still find that this could probably be easily abused and is by far from an easy solution.
But guys, I think we need to remember that not everyone sitting in spectator mode is there to join the winning team. Personally, I enjoy going there just to watch some friends of mine fight and such. And doing so wouldn’t be nearly as fun if it wasn’t live