Guild Wars 2

When is this issue going to be resolved or at least looked into?

Now with F2P its gotten even worse. Another guild grp (who im not allowed to name because of forum rules) was clearly exploiting for 3 hrs none stop. They knew our location at all times, even playing it completely random preventing our zerg capping sentries etc and there they are waiting for us. They clearly were using an alt account on our side to spy on us and see chat etc.

Certain guilds at least in NA are well known for this kind of thing and its beyond a joke now. If you wish to fix wvw and REALLY address it then this issue needs to be sorted.

If there is the same IP address using two accounts at the same time on different teams on same map, this needs to be flagged and monitored by anet staff. You can see a pattern with these accounts and have access to their chat etc.

I know this guild today was exploiting but i cant prove it and its not always possible to pick out the person whos using the alt account to spy. We need the botting/exploiting report feature to have TEXT so we can explain what is going on to any reviewer this is KEY to address this kind of exploiting.

These people have been getting away with this for years and its only getting worse since f2p. I would also like to know if/when someone is busted for this kind of thing which i bet is rare, are ALL thier accounts perma banned or just the free one ?

really need more to be done about this long running issue thats driving people away from this gamemode..

The man to talk to is the head of game security, which will be Chris something-or-other. Cleary, I think?

He doesn’t read these forums. You want something done, start a thread on Reddit.

The reality is there is no rule saying you cannot have accounts on every single server in the game if you wish. Much of this happened prior to the free accounts, but when they offered the $10 accounts, Thousands of players did this during that time. Many guilds made accounts on many servers so they could play on multiple servers, not to actually " spy". Simply because players have accounts on multiple servers and use those accounts to play the game, they are not usually using those accounts to " spy".

Most players could care less about " spying" and have no need for it. They do like to have a variety of players to fight with and against, as the game was getting quite stale being matched up with the same players all the time so many play different servers to play with and against different teams. There is nothing against the rules by doing this, so not sure why you would suggest banning players over something that is not breaking the rules.

You would have to prove they are actually exploiting, and just by playing on multiple servers with accounts they paid for is not actually exploiting. It is just enjoying the game like everyone else.

IN addition, those who do actually spy ( pin watching and such which most players see as a lame thing to do in the first place) are most likely not even using the same IP. They are using multiple computers even different devices that may have it’s separate internet connection such as many phones and tablets do now.

Though this issue is annoying, I am not aware of anyone leaving the game over it. There are FAR more issues running players off from the game than some crappy guy pin watching. Many players have been leaving the game over being able to by die as fast as you can if encountering the enemy, go back and PvD, siege it up and zerg siege hump to win than even really care if some nub is pin watching. Things like spying in games, we pretty much come to expect as it happens no matter what game you go to, unlike things like rewarding the worst team instead of the better teams.

We had it happen for hours last night, with the opposition knowing when we were going to come through a gate, etc. Just made it that much more enjoyable when we won the fights.

It’s going to happen, and there is not a lot you can realistically do to fix it.

Of more concern is that the opposition seem to be able to get 70 people all moving in one blob for a long time and still have scouts whereas we can have 20 people standing around in various spots on the map doing nothing but causing a queue.

Baldrick.8967:

We had it happen for hours last night, with the opposition knowing when we were going to come through a gate, etc. Just made it that much more enjoyable when we won the fights.

It’s going to happen, and there is not a lot you can realistically do to fix it.

Of more concern is that the opposition seem to be able to get 70 people all moving in one blob for a long time and still have scouts whereas we can have 20 people standing around in various spots on the map doing nothing but causing a queue.

Now the queuing up of enemy maps IS something that is an issue, as we have had servers outright tell us this is what they were going to do while they hit our Gari to prevent us from getting onto the maps to defend it. Not only would they outright tell us this is what they were going to do, they would ALSO DDOS the TS at the same time while doing it.. Not sure how to resolve that issue,a s long as there are map limits, it will continue to be an issue.

I don’t think you can really effectively prevent it.

There’s a guy on my server who occasionally gains access to enemy server’s Teamspeak and spies on it. He reports the enemy actions as soon as their commander announces them to his troops.

This behaviour is extremely frowned upon and has resulted in sanctions before in the small capacity in which the community is able to dish them out. However, intel is intel, and a commander cannot ignore it regardless of their disapproval of the fashion in which it was acquired.

I’ve considered reporting them before, but seeing as the reporting system has no option for spying or exploitation, and since my reports of enemy hackers have gone entirely without reaction, I’m not inclined at this time to go out of my way to do so.

Perhaps, in a small way, the purpose of the inflexible design of the reporting system is to discourage such reports from being made to begin with. Out of sight, out of mind. When you can’t report it, it doesn’t happen. Shalalalaa.

msalakka.4653:

I don’t think you can really effectively prevent it.

There’s a guy on my server who occasionally gains access to enemy server’s Teamspeak and spies on it. He reports the enemy actions as soon as their commander announces them to his troops.

This behaviour is extremely frowned upon and has resulted in sanctions before in the small capacity in which the community is able to dish them out. However, intel is intel, and a commander cannot ignore it regardless of their disapproval of the fashion in which it was acquired.

I’ve considered reporting them before, but seeing as the reporting system has no option for spying or exploitation, and since my reports of enemy hackers have gone entirely without reaction, I’m not inclined at this time to go out of my way to do so.

Perhaps, in a small way, the purpose of the inflexible design of the reporting system is to discourage such reports from being made to begin with. Out of sight, out of mind. When you can’t report it, it doesn’t happen. Shalalalaa.

Considering people do not even need to use the same device or router to access the game for multiple servers to do it, there is nothing they can really do about it. Some use their tablet or phone internet connection to play different characters or games while they play GW2.

1. Have the commander detag and use /say. Most often these alt spy accounts are just parked in spawn and relaying the location of the blue dorito.

2. Make friends with your spies! Be super friendly, hang out with them — new players will appreciated the time, spies will hate it. It’s a good way to figure it out. Another hint is if they run past all the siege and stay in the tower and never refresh any. It’s a good giveaway

3. USE your spies. If they’re parked in a certain tower, you know that tower is going to be hit if left empty. Sit down beside them and brew a cup of coffee and chat happily. If they move to a different target, follow them!

Most of all, be nice. This “spy” could really just be a new player who doesn’t know how WvW works. Your interaction with them will determine whether they love this mode of gameplay the way you do, or if they leave and never come back.

In the last week, I’ve seen two cases of worse than spying from a server I’m not going to name, but have used the in-game reporting for.

One was a mesmer who could move through walls. Our server was Red and a zerg was hitting the back wall of Velost while we were trying to defend the keep from the third server. While that was going on, this mesmer magically appears through the wall and drops a portal. Luckily the zerg didn’t realize this guy was exploiting (so it’s not a server-wide effort), so only 5 came through and were defeated before the zerg left.

That mesmer found its way to on top of the red keep (a place you cannot get to legitimately) and stayed there for 20 minutes looking for an opportunity to let the zerg in.

Two nights ago, that same server is now playing red and I’m roaming. I come into the camp pang and notice speedy dolyaks. Not a big deal, people use upgrades, but I also notice this reverant following the yak. I attack the rev as it runs away trying to keep pace with the yak. This happens like 3-4 times and not once did the rev respond to me attacking it. Finally I’m able to immobilize it and kill it without it ever one attacking me. They were trying to make ogrewatch T3, which was recently flipped, and were using the rev bot to share boons with the yak and keep it immortal.

I just hope someone finds a way to hack a match during a televised spvp tournament and completely embarrasses anet. THEN, they would do something about hacking.

There is absolutely nothing that can be done about it unless things break the game rules. Spying in not breaking any rules.

Spies have always been useful in wars, WvW is war, and the server that afford spies does have that advantage, simple as that.

Spying in wvw has existed ever since mmorpgs created that mode of play. There is absolutely nothing one can do about it. As some other posters said, there are far more important issues with wvw to be concerned about.

Lots of players out there, myself included, have multiple accounts. And I would be willing to bet that most of those players, myself included, don’t want to even bother with wasting game time to spy in wvw. There is lots more fun to be had in game with those other accounts actually playing alts, rather than wasting valuable game time spying on a wvw foe.

I could maybe see someone spying if they had absolutely no life outside of the game, and/or if they took wvw mode way too seriously. I think it would be a lot more fun to actually be a scout in wvw…..certainly a lot more challenging and rewarding, and a much better use of my limited game time, imo.

Before, the only time you really needed to worry about spies was during a tourney. Otherwise, it was usually a moot point, as it was extremely hard for 1 person or even a guild of 10 people to make a big impact without raising a huge red flag.

Throughout the years of the game though, with the sales of alts and friends we’ve each made at home, on our mains, on our alts that may have since moved to another server we now find ourselves fighting, the friends list itself could be now and potentially in the future the biggest spying tool of all. So, short of driving yourself insane thinking about the reality that there are more spies or potential future spies after the next pairing switch all around then there ever was before, the only thing we can really do is just play the game.

msalakka.4653:

The man to talk to is the head of game security, which will be Chris something-or-other. Cleary, I think?

He doesn’t read these forums. You want something done, start a thread on Reddit.

Now this guy gets it! If you want your thread to be seen, and more likely to be responded to by a dev, copy/paste your thread here onto Reddit.

I’ve been wondering if maybe the big-wigs at Anet put a “1 post a month” limit on the devs in here.

They will never fix this “spy” issue, because it really can’t be fixed, mainly because if they are any good at it, you would have no idea who spy was. Think about it, now with cross guild chat, they could join both a WvW guild on your server and their server, so be in opposing guilds at the same time, then join your team speak, chat it up with you acting like your best buddy, all the while reporting your every action to their main server alliance.

And there is not a thing you could do about it, because you would really have no way to stop them, or even know who is the spy and who is not. In your guild? Not a guarantee they are not spy, On your server, again, could be a spy, dying right next to you, could still be a spy.

There is zero ways for Anet to stop that, unless they did something like Server Bind your ISP, which would suck, because lets say, you and your brother are on opposing teams, because, you want to face off…. and BAM.. banned for spying!

So what do you expect Anet to do about it?

Sadly you don’t even need multiple accounts to spy is just the easiest.

I have seen people with too much disposable income just move their regular to a new server. But it was fullish so while waiting for a chance to transfer just played wvw while reporting all movements to the guild/server they were looking to join

Spying seems to be the lesser of two evils when you have servers that effectively coordinate a double-team against the 3rd server in a matchup, producing even more lopsided play than merely knowing enemy positions. We have recently seen this happening, where server #1 will step aside to let server #2 take a camp while server #1 attacks our server to prevent us from taking the camp or engaging server #2. It’s like we’re playing with real-world politics, or even reality-show tribal-council politics, yet most of us come here to escape that crap and just want an honest fight, win or lose.

In massive PvP game, spying is something current and difficult to manage for a game editor.

It’s boring in a “match approach” of that kind of PvP as in GW2, but it’s not as developped as it can be in some other games…I’m thinking “sandbox” MMO.

To give you an idea of that phenomena let me tell you the story of the fall of Band of Brothers (BoB), a big alliance of guilds (PvP specialized ones) that have dominated the game “Eve online” (a space opera MMO I also play) at a moment of its history.

To understand just keep in mind that this MMO is a “sandbox” one, in which guilds are called corporations and constitute alliances as they want to control territories that provide them different kind of ressources. In that game, death is very punitive as the player loose all the Equipment of its avatar and have to replace it. Even the biggest “crafting structures” are build by players and can be destroyed. So the control of those territories and ressorces is very very important.

Goonswarm, an other alliance and one of BoB’s largest and longest enemies gained a Director (a sort of GM) spy in its umbrella corporation. 2009, february 5th, The director kicked all of the members without roles from the corporation, and disbanded the umbrella corporation for the alliance. The différents corporations of BoB see themselves has ennemies….And immediatly Goonswarm attacked them. BoB lost all of its sovereignty in the Eve Universe , a capital fleet (the most powerfull weapons which are very very expensive), and a large sum of ISK (the money of the game). Goonswarm promptly put in an application for an alliance under the name of BoB and effectively prevented the alliance from ever getting to hold its namesake again.

In that game this action has never been considered as an exploit, and is in fact considered as one of the most famous spying/destabilzation operation in its history.

Up to the players to limit spying and build strategies for that as an absolute control of their TS/mumble.
Lots of guilds ask also for the API of the player who want to join them to study their game account and see if something seems anormal.

I guess that if in Gw2 WvW, spying become a real issue that can modify a match result, players will have to develop strategies against as the most efficient answer to the issue.

I’m not really sure what could be done as they can listen to an enemy TS and Anet cannot control what happens outside of their game.

Plus there are many other ways. For example, say your friend has an account on an enemy server; you could always just tell them to go into WvW and relay information. They wouldn’t have to sabotage anything at all and could play normally.

I suppose there needs to be more report options though. There are too many things that cannot fit in those categories.

One thing that can help. Please allow commanders to choose if their tag is visible to everyone or not. This will benefit private guild groups running. It will reduce tag watching. I know this is a much sought after feature.

lol I’ve been on a server where they used a spy to get fights! OR at least as many as they could.

You see the enemy servers, although outnumbering the server I was on, were just bad, even when they built arrow carts in open field, or their tower walls.
You see the enemy servers love to PvD rather than fight for a tower, even when they outnumber you 2 or 3 to 1.
Because the enemy died so easily, the enemy just ran away when they saw the front of out zerg, like literally either run into their closest tower, or waypoint away! They refused to fight at all!

So enter the spy who told the commander where the enemy zerg was, and we followed then or waited for them, and then annihilated them.
The enemy zerg even tried to go to other maps to get away from fights so they could PvD in peace! We didnt let them, but then they left to another map.

Dont get me, wrong here, we didnt use the spy to take towers when the enemy zerg was on the other side of the map, we used them to hunt the enemy zerg, we didnt care about about taking towers, even if the walls were taken down by either a small ally group or the third server. We simply went in for the fight.

What fun is there for them to run away?
What fun is there for server who want fights to see a larger enemy zerg just waypoint away in front of you?

This is a flaw in the WvW design. Zergs going round flipping and reflipping towers.
There isnt much incentive to stay and defend a tower.

It’s something you can’t do much about. Only PPTERS will worry about that stuff

The Ventari Ele.5812:

lol I’ve been on a server where they used a spy to get fights! OR at least as many as they could.

You see the enemy servers, although outnumbering the server I was on, were just bad, even when they built arrow carts in open field, or their tower walls.
You see the enemy servers love to PvD rather than fight for a tower, even when they outnumber you 2 or 3 to 1.
Because the enemy died so easily, the enemy just ran away when they saw the front of out zerg, like literally either run into their closest tower, or waypoint away! They refused to fight at all!

So enter the spy who told the commander where the enemy zerg was, and we followed then or waited for them, and then annihilated them.
The enemy zerg even tried to go to other maps to get away from fights so they could PvD in peace! We didnt let them, but then they left to another map.

Dont get me, wrong here, we didnt use the spy to take towers when the enemy zerg was on the other side of the map, we used them to hunt the enemy zerg, we didnt care about about taking towers, even if the walls were taken down by either a small ally group or the third server. We simply went in for the fight.

What fun is there for them to run away?
What fun is there for server who want fights to see a larger enemy zerg just waypoint away in front of you?

This is a flaw in the WvW design. Zergs going round flipping and reflipping towers.
There isnt much incentive to stay and defend a tower.

What fun was it to fiGht groups that didn’t want or were incapable of fighting? It goes both ways….

It is the nature of the game. This is one issue you can’t fix. But as the old saying goes “if you can’t beat em, then join em”. It is annoying/lame/stupid that people take the game so serious that they need to go to such lengths to get an advantage but it is an advantage that anyone can get.

I would reply to this thread, but I am sure your ALL SPIES!!! This is a spy thread isn’t it?? Come on Spy’s. Tell the truth??

I am convinced, that ANET are N Korean Gamers who hire American actors to pretend they are devs and this is how N Korea trolls America. It makes no sense in any other way that a game would be this oblivious to the comments of their players.

Liston.9708:

What fun was it to fiGht groups that didn’t want or were incapable of fighting? It goes both ways….

Sure if you are a small 5 man roaming group trying to capture a tower on your own, but when an entire server zerg refuses to fight, what’s the point of them being on the map?!

This is WvW, not EOTM!

Again this is a flaw in WvW and the ranking system, servers who like fights who end up being matched with servers who PvD, log off early cos it’s boring.
The PVd servers however prefer this, as they can then cap the maps and gain PPT, and give the illusion that they are the better server.

The old WvW devs have all left, the ones assigned to WvW now have no idea what to do.

The Ventari Ele.5812:

Liston.9708:

What fun was it to fiGht groups that didn’t want or were incapable of fighting? It goes both ways….

Sure if you are a small 5 man roaming group trying to capture a tower on your own, but when an entire server zerg refuses to fight, what’s the point of them being on the map?!

This is WvW, not EOTM!

Again this is a flaw in WvW and the ranking system, servers who like fights who end up being matched with servers who PvD, log off early cos it’s boring.
The PVd servers however prefer this, as they can then cap the maps and gain PPT, and give the illusion that they are the better server.

The old WvW devs have all left, the ones assigned to WvW now have no idea what to do.

don’t know the exact circumstance, but if people are outnumbered or have already wiped to a group multiple times – they will run/avoid. would they have before ppk? who knows…. you can always reduce your zerg size in hopes they will turn and fight…..

The free accounts should be restricted to 3 days in WvW, just to check it out, and then barred from playing until a full purchase. Three days is plenty of time for someone to make up their mind if they like the game mode or not.

Sure, there will be people that will still be able to afford to buy 1,284 (lol) accounts to spy on other servers, but restricting the free accounts would make a HUGE dent in this issue.

People from enemy servers have been pulling tactivators just prior to attacks...it’s actually helpful because it lets us know where the next attack will be.