The Sobering Tale of Hot-Join

Late 2012I jumped into sPVP a few months after GW2’s launch because of how enamored I was with the essentially foreign concept of an equal PvP playing field. My experiences with MMORPGs before that point had always been that of the Free-to-Play model, where you would either pay a lot of money for the best gear or you were farmed for the enjoyment of those who did. As a solo player, I valued how quickly and easily I could experience GW2’s fast and fluid combat system in the form of Hot-Join servers. At that time the population of sPVP, including Hot-Join servers, was large. There were always many 5v5 Hot-Join games filled with players. After playing Hot-Join’s for a while, I start to recognize and get friend requests from other regulars. There is usually some sort of chat going on, but it’s sparse and not really full conversations; the focus was on the gameplay. Matches were rarely had evenly skilled players on each team, but more often than not the teams were of equal size. Another problem which showed up some times was that of spawn camping.

April 30, 2013As if in answer to one of our prayers, Spectating was released for Hot-Join. Players who enter a server are first placed in spectating mode from which they may join the match. Every Hot-Join server now hosts up to ten additional players who are able to view the map from vantage points or can follow specific players around the match. This was when Hot-Join players really became a community. We competed for spots in the matches that were completely full, half the spectators keeping one eye closely on the 'join' button in case someone left or disconnected. When someone in the match had to go deal with their kids, grab a smoke, or a sandwich, someone else would jump in to hold their spot for them while they were busy. Chat would almost always be active. There were pleasant greetings and departures, jokes, trolls, legitimate balance discussion, salt, NSFW content and who knows what else. During the particularly popular times of the day it would sometimes be more fun to just spectate and watch or contribute to the chat.Because of the fact that Hot-Join sounds and looks like the most causal of sPvP game modes, it attracts new players frequently. This is unfortunate for them since most of us HJ regulars have quite a bit of PVP experience under our belts. Although we were largely inviting and as helpful as possible to new players, some veterans don’t get the message and the dog-eat-dog world of an sPvP Hot-Join servers is a brutal one. With the addition of spectating, it became much easier for players who want to win, to force Auto-Balancing and move to the winning team.

June 25, 2013Custom Arenas purchasable with Gems came to the game at this time. These arenas were largely used to create extremely barebones 1v1 maps operating under the honor system. Occasionally I would become frustrated with how hard it was to fight someone 1v1, so I would dip into one of these Custom Arenas for that experience. I quickly learned that they were more trouble than they are worth thanks to how long it takes to organize 1v1’s. Additionally, the 1v1 arenas would often become full, meaning you couldn’t fight someone without running into someone else.

December 10, 2013The ability to earn up to five gold a day from PvP was added to the game at this time. We were quite happy for this addition even though it meant that sometimes PvEers came into the game mode to farm.

April 15, 2014The daily system was overhauled to combine the PvP and PvE dailies together. This exacerbated the problem from the December 10, 2013 update where players would enter the mode for gold instead of fun.

December 16, 2014Daily profession winner, player kills, and point capture were added to the game. Now that one of the requirements for the PvP daily was a match victory, deliberate Auto-Balance manipulation became so pervasive that there were almost no matches that occurred without it. This also begins the era of Custom Arenas that exist for no other purpose than to have players tag one another and then fall off the Skyhammer map or otherwise get themselves killed for the daily. Around this point, these farm servers ended up becoming more populated than the servers for actual gameplay.

October 23, 2015Elite specializations are added to the game with Heart of Thorns expansion. Arena Net are initially ambiguous as to whether these new specializations are intended to be stronger than their core counterparts, but it quickly becomes apparent that they are intended to be that way. Build diversity was never that high in sPvP, but after the release of HoT it took a significant hit. Core account only players, left with nothing but frustration from their lack of efficacy in sPvP, started leaving PvP. This marked the beginning of a slow decline of our Hot-Join community.

April 19, 2016The Daily system was reworked so that instead of reaching a five gold cap after a certain amount of play, players now receive two gold from completing three of the four daily achievements. Two of the daily achievements for PVP are Tournament participation and Rated Game Winner (Unranked and Ranked matches). This means it is no longer possible for player to receive any meaningful reward by playing only Hot-Join. This means that although gold farming in Custom Arenas became impossible, Hot-Join players were affected with the same stroke. This was the final nail in the coffin for Hot-Join. At this point we were lucky to get a full game with back-up spectators during peak times. This patch signaled the fast, irreversible decline of Hot-Join.

September 22, 2017Path of Fire releases another set of elite specializations that are stronger than the Heart of Thorns elite specializations. Build diversity is no better than at the release of the last expansion. Even at peak times, there are not enough players to start a match. Hot-Join, my only GW2 community and favorite game mode is gone.

November 4, 2018There may yet be hope for Hot-Join. I know that while some left the game for good, others have moved temporarily to Unranked or Ranked. Below I outline some ideas on what can be done to revive Hot-Join and to improve it.

Proposed Hot-Join changes (this is by no means a comprehensive list, just some major items)

Ways to Combat Spawn Camping: Adjust Rank Point gain so that players gain much less progress if they kill an opponent near their spawn.

Reward Changes: Add a daily achievement for playing two HJ matches start to finish without spectating. The game already kicks you out of the match if you’re afk for a certain length of time so afk farming isn’t possible.

Auto-Balance Changes: The game will not start with uneven teams. Once the game has begun, spectators will instantly be offered the opportunity to join the game on the team with less players. This is because it is often too easy for spectators to miss the fact that the teams are uneven. The spectator who joins will receive a decent rank point bonus but only if they participate until the end of the match (not going back into spectate mode or otherwise leaving).If two people or more leave then the auto-balance feature kicks in (in cases where the player difference is 3 or 5 the system rounds down as usual) in addition to the spectator offer. The current auto-balance feature has some changes. It will now instantly offer the opposing team the opportunity to change teams instead of waiting 10 or so seconds after someone leaves. Additionally, if someone choses to volunteer he doesn’t have to wait for 15 seconds to be swapped. He can, instead of waiting to see who will be chosen to assist the undermanned team, click the swap team option on the PvP screen. In fact, the Volunteer button should switch over to a Swap Team button. Coupled with this are a few settings which allow a player to decide what the computer does with them ahead of time in the event of uneven teams. These checkboxes are:• Auto-balance feature will automatically volunteer me.• Swap teams instantly if I am selected to change sides.• If I am propositioned to join a team while actively spectating, automatically volunteer me.• Join the undermanned team instantly if I am chosen from spectating mode.

Proposed General PvP Changes

Custom Arenas:

Add a 1v1 Custom Arena Server: Players may join servers which are sections of existing maps that are large enough for a 1v1. There is a button players can press to instantly teleport them to their spawn point, remove them from combat, and reset all cooldowns.

Unranked sPvP:

Remove Dishonor from missing the ready check: During the time between when the game has assembled the right players to when the queue ready check timer runs out, the game should continually be searching for players to fill the gap in case someone doesn’t select ready in time. This only works for solo queued players. When the timer runs out, a new ready screen shows up if a back-up player has been found.

General

When switching characters while waiting for a match to start, the game does not load the new character’s map prior to teleporting that character to the sPvP match map.

When a player is in queue, the crossed swords sPvP icon on the top left of the screen is replaced by an indicator that tells you how many people the matchmaker has selected for the match (1/10, 4/10, etc. . . ). This allows players to know not only that valuable information, but also the fact that they are indeed queued for a match.

good read. I was very disappointed when I logged on after a long hiatus to see hotjoin dead. there was a pretty cool community in server 001 and that's where I spent the majority of my pvp time. now I play non meta builds in unranked and focus more on fights. basically unranked became my new hotjoin. I don't care for conquest.

that being said I think the biggest problem with hotjoin was the choice to join teams. two or three good players would always fight to be on one team and so force the other team to have the not so good people. sometimes this not so good team went on ridiculously long losing streaks. no, scratch that, this always happened. I miss the community of custom arenas but glad its gone since the unranked arena fights are way better.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:that being said I think the biggest problem with hotjoin was the choice to join teams. two or three good players would always fight to be on one team and so force the other team to have the not so good people. sometimes this not so good team went on ridiculously long losing streaks. no, scratch that, this always happened. I miss the community of custom arenas but glad its gone since the unranked arena fights are way better.

Yeah the games were one sided much of the time. However when I played I always switched to the losing team and tried to make miraculous comebacks :D. Also, having moved to Ranked, I've found that the matches are largely one sided there too so it made me question just how much of a difference is was between the two modes; not that there's any way to compare anymore. . .

You are saying you'd choose a more balanced match over the ability to join and leave matches quickly and on a whim while playing with people you know and enjoy the company of?

Hrm, interesting read. Not so sure how I feel about it.

@Ovark.2514 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:that being said I think the biggest problem with hotjoin was the choice to join teams. two or three good players would always fight to be on one team and so force the other team to have the not so good people. sometimes this not so good team went on ridiculously long losing streaks. no, scratch that, this always happened. I miss the community of custom arenas but glad its gone since the unranked arena fights are way better.

well i'd rather have good matches and good company, so if hotjoin were to be fixed somehow then yeah i'm all for it. as it was the terrible match quality mostly offset the community impact for me. I only realized this after I played unranked for some time. while there are plenty of one sided games in unranked and ranked, it was no where near the level of hotjoin where 9 out of 10 games were steamroll quality.

@Ovark.2514 said:

Yeah the games were one sided much of the time. However when I played I always switched to the losing team and tried to make miraculous comebacks :D. Also, having moved to Ranked, I've found that the matches are largely one sided there too so it made me question just how much of a difference is was between the two modes; not that there's any way to compare anymore. . .

To me, hotjoin sounds like an inferior version of unranked.

As for one-sided ranked matches, this past season felt like one of the more competitive ones in recent memory. I can't cite any data, but anecdotally I feel like the losing teams in most of my matches broke 400, which in my book makes a tight match. I hang around the 1550-1600 mmr range all season, so it could just be a function of where I'm ranked.

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Ovark.2514 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:that being said I think the biggest problem with hotjoin was the choice to join teams. two or three good players would always fight to be on one team and so force the other team to have the not so good people. sometimes this not so good team went on ridiculously long losing streaks. no, scratch that, this always happened. I miss the community of custom arenas but glad its gone since the unranked arena fights are way better.

Just join a discord community and run inhouses & scrims. That is by far a superior hotjoin'ish situation.

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Ovark.2514 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:that being said I think the biggest problem with hotjoin was the choice to join teams. two or three good players would always fight to be on one team and so force the other team to have the not so good people. sometimes this not so good team went on ridiculously long losing streaks. no, scratch that, this always happened. I miss the community of custom arenas but glad its gone since the unranked arena fights are way better.

for a long time (a year or more) there was one full hotjoin server. could someone find 10 people via discord to play a couple hours a day? possibly. I doubt it would be as easy as you make it seem and to be honest I don't care that much to do it.

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Ovark.2514 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:that being said I think the biggest problem with hotjoin was the choice to join teams. two or three good players would always fight to be on one team and so force the other team to have the not so good people. sometimes this not so good team went on ridiculously long losing streaks. no, scratch that, this always happened. I miss the community of custom arenas but glad its gone since the unranked arena fights are way better.

You make it sound like an easy task...

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@sephiroth.4217 said:Just join a discord community and run inhouses & scrims. That is by far a superior hotjoin'ish situation.You make it sound like an easy task...

Exactly! One of the main draws of Hotjoin is how you accessible it was. At almost any point you could just hop in and have fun because the game is always going.

I miss hj a lot, made most of my friendlist there.But on hj you mostly saw the same faces everyday (from HoT on) which on one hand shows it was a small community and on the other hand allowed you to play non-drama fun friendly matches.