Guild Wars 2

Yesterday in TC, in our own garrison, there was a guild group dropping useless siege (like flame rams on top of walls, etc.) and just basically abusing people in map/team chat. They said they were doing this because A.Net won’t do kitten about them. As a guild we did report them but this is out of control. They were trying to siege cap our map so that no more siege could be placed down.

So a proposal is to have a way to reclaim the supplies in useless siege or just destroy it.

How would the server know what’s useless siege or not? What’s to stop the trolls from destroying valuable siege?

Atherakhia.4086:

How would the server know what’s useless siege or not? What’s to stop the trolls from destroying valuable siege?

If it is a flame ram is anywhere but a gate? Some of the others are a bit more difficult but we need a way to kind of prevent this from happening. I understand that they could desiege but it would be easier to resiege than be capped. With one of these siege trolls, we had over 200 catapults in our Garrison and he made sure he ticked them for 8 hours. That is just ridiculous.

We had one chap, who has been doing this for over 2 yrs to TC and bragging that he was getting supplies from another server that was fighting us. It may or may not be, but he did spend an awful lot of money on siege – either spending his own or who knows – not blaming anyone else.

I am sure other servers have this issue and it needs to be dealt with.

I’ve heard about this so much lately from quite a few other servers. I’ve seen YT videos of the same hackers and trolls over pretty long periods of time, and they’re still out there playing. That really seems crazy to me. I can’t think of one non-indie/browser type game that doesn’t take this very serious. And I’m talking about the ones with video proof of hax and trolls. Takes a minute to find quite a few obvious hackers, and most are still not banned(if you read their recent comments).

Maybe a “map vote” of some sort would work to get rid of troll siege and get the supply to go to the closest supply area or along those lines? I’m quite sure there has to be an easy fix to this. This also would help for eg. when a commander puts down a certain amount of rams at a gate, and then someone who doesn’t know better throws down another ram not knowing the commander knew they had just enough supply to get though 2 gates. You could just start a map vote to take it down and get the supply back if happened in a certain amount of time from it’s construction. It’s good to brainstorm these problems instead of saying they won’t work w/o a thought or idea on an easy way to stop siege trolling ect.

And then all we have to do is cross our fingers and hope Anet is above using suggestions of their customers. I imagine most of them try to, and do think a lot of ideas coming from us are good ones, but the designers and programmers have people they answer to, even Anet as a company has people they answer to, and their vision could be quite different than most of us players. All we can do is keep voicing these types of things. There’s some amazing threads here with lists of well thought out ideas. Hopefully it isn’t just the forum mods and a couple devs who dissect these forums and the other top notch GW2 forums out there.

Good to hear that you’re taking action on these things Michael!

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Maybe it’s because it’s Friday and I suck at reading, but aren’t you contradicting yourself here?

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

I’m confused…

The claims were false, yet you found someone doing it and banned them?

Wouldn’t that make the claims true…?

Also I have seen flame rams placed in places not on a gate that were used for defense and blocking a “choke point”. I belive such placements can be legitimate and doesn’t mean that they are trolling. But thats not always the case.

Atherakhia.4086:

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

I’m confused…

The claims were false, yet you found someone doing it and banned them?

Wouldn’t that make the claims true…?

I think he was referring to the claims that Anet won’t do anything about it….

I think he is referring to the claims that it was a guild doing it. I am a little confused as well.

Edit: Can I just have my post deleted? I was ninja’ed with an official answer instead of a guessing answer, haha.

Michael Henninger.7451:

The claims that the particular guild was laying siege is false. Apologies. It was someone else.

Thanks for the clarification. :-) Nice to see you guys being a bit more active about policing this.

Michael Henninger.7451:

The claims that the particular guild was laying siege is false. Apologies. It was someone else.

Not sure what you were investigating but I provided you the names via in game mail. These individuals were indeed building flames rams randomly in garrison, also draining the supply. On top of that, they decided to build an absurd amount of trebs around the supply area.

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

Michael, I have guild mates that have screen caps of them actually taunting A.Net to do something about them. There was 4 of them at one point when I saw them, and they all had Commanders tags up – taunting all of the TC server members.

This is not the one that was taken care of 2 weeks ago, this is a whole new group.

You can PM me in game to get all the information.

I think this is a great outcome Michael and we really appreciate your response time. I just want to clarify a few things. What seems like happened now at this point went like this.

- Earlier in day, Individual drops siege could or could not be related to guild
- Middle of day., Guild comes in and owns it, ticks siege, ports in just before siege decay counter runs out several times. Makes claims about “helping” etc..
-Investigation begins later in day.

The false claims thing comes from the behavior the guild took in maintaining the siege, and not as a result of an abuse of the reporting system. I think the reporting system worked perfectly in this situation.

So what could have happened is that a guild just wanted to take advantage of a situation to troll yet not really understand the implications. In hindsight I don’t think they would risk accounts with 14k achievement points.

Thanks again for the fast response!

este.8651:

I think this is a great outcome Michael and we really appreciate your response time. I just want to clarify a few things. What seems like happened now at this point went like this.

- Earlier in day, Individual drops siege could or could not be related to guild
- Middle of day., Guild comes in and owns it, ticks siege, ports in just before siege decay counter runs out several times. Makes claims about “helping” etc..
-Investigation begins later in day.

The false claims thing comes from the behavior the guild took in maintaining the siege, and not as a result of an abuse of the reporting system. I think the reporting system worked perfectly in this situation.

So what could have happened is that a guild just wanted to take advantage of a situation to troll yet not really understand the implications. In hindsight I don’t think they would risk accounts with 14k achievement points.

Thanks again for the fast response!

No – TC is a very, usually tight knit server. The Guild in question came into a server meeting and tried to disrupt it and were thrown out of mumble for being rude and obnoxious. We have screen caps of them saying, we are placing troll siege. ‘Report us because A.Net will do nothing to us’. The guild, I belong to, has screen caps of the whole affair.

Well, it is obvious that A.net won’t deal with them and that is sad.

To the above poster – they didn’t care. They dared the whole server, in map/team chat to report them because A.Net does nothing to trolls. It seems the one we had before, was just a one off case.

Said it before and say it again … just add the name of the person to the end of the siege name…. “superior flame ram by hexin.5603”

I think it’s cool GM’s are doing their jobs. But there needs a better way to report these, and quicker action needs to be taken based on what some have said above.

Hexin.5603:

Said it before and say it again … just add the name of the person to the end of the siege name…. “superior flame ram by hexin.5603”

I like this idea and make it visible only to your server, so the other servers don’t know who is on the map. I want to say a guildie came up with the name on the siege idea and I thought I would post it here.

I think Michael simply stating that he can see who placed siege would make a huge impact regardless if its true or not.

I know that guild taunted us but I don’t think they knew what was going to happen and how fast. I remember one of their guild members voluntarily saying a ban only happens for 24hrs the first time. This could or could not be true but I really think they had an old impression of GM response. This was a 24hr response and I think it shows a sincere attempt on anets part to address this issue.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Atherakhia.4086:

How would the server know what’s useless siege or not? What’s to stop the trolls from destroying valuable siege?

If it is a flame ram is anywhere but a gate? …

I know it’s not the most efficient use of resources, but on Borlis Pass, I’ve had fun defending gates with a flame ram placed on the inside.

I can imagine the flame ram skills could also be useful on top of a wall under fairly specific circumstances, and although that clearly wasn’t the intention of these players, I think it would be heavy-handed to restrict siege weaponry to a few designated areas.

If there are other options for addressing this issue, I think they would be better on principle. I remember how much less fun things became when I could no longer use my consumable weapons in dungeons, for instance, though I understand the reasoning behind it. Siege weapons currently have the potential to be used creatively and cleverly, and when the player uses them so, they can be very effective. Restricting locations (more than they already are, of course) could definitely make them less fun.

But then again, I’m the kind of guy who would build a ballista on top of one of the barns in a supply camp if given the option. Or maybe inside one of the buildings… then I would have a teammate lure people into my trap! See? My creativity is being thwarted already. Just think of how much more mundane it could become.

This whole troll siege naming thing was argued to death multiple times. Rams have other uses besides being on gates. Granted placing them around a supply depot is a sign of trying to waste siege, but even this has legitimate reasons at certain times (example, when trying to remove supply from a keep before it flips, although personally I have used ballis and trebs for this)

Additionally, I rather would not like the idea of my name plastered all over siege. What if you accidentally throw siege wrong, because you were in a hurry at the time? Now, you have people yelling at you for placing it poorly, calling you a noob, telling you to learn how to throw siege properly. Or, you only had regular Arrow Carts and used them in an attempt to defend a tower, and now your server is yelling at you for not using Superior siege, even though if you had not thrown the regular that tower would be lost? These are things that ALREADY happen, and having a name on them would make it worse. If I was in there and wanted to defend, but knew people would do this, I wouldn’t bother. This would open up even more trolling, because it would give people an easy target.

btw, screenshots, etc, while it can be used to show actions going on, are not what Anet would use to ban someone. They use chat logs, and in game behavior. mumble/ts/vent are all outside of the game, and therefore outside of their jurisdiction.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

This whole troll siege naming thing was argued to death multiple times. Rams have other uses besides being on gates. Granted placing them around a supply depot is a sign of trying to waste siege, but even this has legitimate reasons at certain times (example, when trying to remove supply from a keep before it flips, although personally I have used ballis and trebs for this)

Additionally, I rather would not like the idea of my name plastered all over siege. What if you accidentally throw siege wrong, because you were in a hurry at the time? Now, you have people yelling at you for placing it poorly, calling you a noob, telling you to learn how to throw siege properly. Or, you only had regular Arrow Carts and used them in an attempt to defend a tower, and now your server is yelling at you for not using Superior siege, even though if you had not thrown the regular that tower would be lost? These are things that ALREADY happen, and having a name on them would make it worse. If I was in there and wanted to defend, but knew people would do this, I wouldn’t bother. This would open up even more trolling, because it would give people an easy target.

btw, screenshots, etc, while it can be used to show actions going on, are not what Anet would use to ban someone. They use chat logs, and in game behavior. mumble/ts/vent are all outside of the game, and therefore outside of their jurisdiction.

We did and it was ignored.

Those that I reported were not falsely I took screen shots. That could be provided if asked.

Just because someone taunted folks in mumble or /map or /say doesn’t mean they actually deployed any siege or wasted supply. It’s not enough to have screen caps of their threats.

And screens from mumble aren’t that helpful, since people’s mumble IDs need not match their in-game names.

The thing to keep in mind about trolls is that they thrive off discord; their goal is to disrupt as much as possible. The more you engage them in chat or complain about them on the forums, the more they see themselves as succeeding. Therefore, the most effective tactic in dealing with them is to ignore them in game and quietly report them (along with details useful to anet to help catch them in the act).

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

This whole troll siege naming thing was argued to death multiple times. Rams have other uses besides being on gates. Granted placing them around a supply depot is a sign of trying to waste siege, but even this has legitimate reasons at certain times (example, when trying to remove supply from a keep before it flips, although personally I have used ballis and trebs for this)

Additionally, I rather would not like the idea of my name plastered all over siege. What if you accidentally throw siege wrong, because you were in a hurry at the time? Now, you have people yelling at you for placing it poorly, calling you a noob, telling you to learn how to throw siege properly. Or, you only had regular Arrow Carts and used them in an attempt to defend a tower, and now your server is yelling at you for not using Superior siege, even though if you had not thrown the regular that tower would be lost? These are things that ALREADY happen, and having a name on them would make it worse. If I was in there and wanted to defend, but knew people would do this, I wouldn’t bother. This would open up even more trolling, because it would give people an easy target.

btw, screenshots, etc, while it can be used to show actions going on, are not what Anet would use to ban someone. They use chat logs, and in game behavior. mumble/ts/vent are all outside of the game, and therefore outside of their jurisdiction.

There is no tactical reason for building 25 trebs in garison and almost as many rams while openly trolling in mapchat and asking people for gold so they can transfer out of the server.

This is exactly what happened : 4-5 people from that guild drained garison supply from full to zero and kept draining as yaks came in. they built as many trebs as they could and then (after hitting the map siege cap) started building rams (rams dont count towards the siege cap). There is no way to mistake this with some mistake. Its not just one ram or one treb misplaced. They were openely admitting their griefing and inviting people to report them, feeling completely invulnerable. At that point me and practically everyone else on the map did report them and messaged the GMs. Those same people kept logging in from time to time to refresh the useless siege, as everyone else was instructed to let it despawn.

A few hours after all the reports, a GM showed up in TC bl (and I am really glad that Anet starts doing that, this is a big step in the right direction) but apparently failed to catch the griefers red handed and is now accusing everyone else of false reporting which seems crazy to me and all the people who witnessed them. I totally understand that GM can’t always be there to catch all the griefers, but they should really think twice before accusing people of false reporting. To my knowledge noone has been banned for “false reporting” in this story but it’s still very hurtful when you take some of your time to report people that are purposely ruining the wvw experience of others, and you get accused in return.

I dont know how many people are in that guild and how many are griefers. All I know and reported is that 5 people were openly greifing while repping that same guild. And today 2 of them were doing the same thing again this time in EB keep, building rams everywhere to drain supply and trying to position them in the most annoying way possible (for instance right on top of cannons or mortars)…

Michael:

Would it be possible, or appropriate, to perodically post statics of people being actioned without revealing names, account info, or anything.

Something like:
Last month
22 people were warned about being abusive in chat.
37 people were suspended for disrupting game play
13 people were banned for using thirdy party cheat programs.
etc.

Something like this would go a long way to show that something is being done about such people. As it is now, we hear so little and see even less in game to even consider that the GMs are doing something. Which leads to many many people believe that such behavior is acceptable because as those people were saying “Anet doesn’t do anything so why does it matter?”

Just a thought….

There were 35 trebs built in garri, including under the supply depots. It must be a new meta

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

Terminating accounts for trolling siege seems really extreme unless it’s massively recidivistic offender O___O

Errant.1509:

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

Terminating accounts for trolling siege seems really extreme unless it’s massively recidivistic offender O___O

Make an example of a few people and you’ll solve a lot of problems. Wish they’d do this with PvP AFKers in Ranked and Unranked too.

No one is arguing that troll siege wasn’t thrown. My point was to say that the so called easy solutions only open up more issues and even more trolling of innocents.

GM took action on the one that threw siege. What do they go by? What they see in person, and the logs. You know, the very thing the GM is being told to look at… No I wasn’t there, but what I am seeing is a bit silly.

Errant.1509:

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

Terminating accounts for trolling siege seems really extreme unless it’s massively recidivistic offender O___O

An account termination is exactly what they deserve. We are not talking about one time trolling but large scale griefing that is affecting all the wvw players on the server. People are terminated for selling gold or using macros, I dont see how this is less of an offense.

However I would be very shocked if anyone got suspended or terminated for false reporting over what happened in TC bl yesterday. I am positive that there was more than 1 person involved in the griefing and I am just one of the many witnesses.

pdavis.8031:

Michael:

Would it be possible, or appropriate, to perodically post statics of people being actioned without revealing names, account info, or anything.

Something like:
Last month
22 people were warned about being abusive in chat.
37 people were suspended for disrupting game play
13 people were banned for using thirdy party cheat programs.
etc.

Something like this would go a long way to show that something is being done about such people. As it is now, we hear so little and see even less in game to even consider that the GMs are doing something. Which leads to many many people believe that such behavior is acceptable because as those people were saying “Anet doesn’t do anything so why does it matter?”

Just a thought….

Yes, anything that ANet can do to let us know that action is taken regularly would be helpful. Obviously, doubters are still gonna doubt, but there are many players who would be more likely to spend the time needed to make a verifiable report, if they knew that their actions are likely to result in action…instead of inaction.

I’m sure you guys do internal metrics regularly, since that’s how you know if your policies are effective, so maybe some of that could be “cleaned up” for the public.

Atistheso.4657:

Errant.1509:

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

Terminating accounts for trolling siege seems really extreme unless it’s massively recidivistic offender O___O

An account termination is exactly what they deserve. We are not talking about one time trolling but large scale griefing that is affecting all the wvw players on the server. People are terminated for selling gold or using macros, I dont see how this is less of an offense.

However I would be very shocked if anyone got suspended or terminated for false reporting over what happened in TC bl yesterday. I am positive that there was more than 1 person involved in the griefing and I am just one of the many witnesses.

If anything those who were actioned for false reporting, were probably reporting members of the same guild that was doing this, but they themselves were not involved. So it went out in map chat that “XYZ guild is seige trolling report them!”
So people saw members of XYZ guild and just reported while not being sure if those players were the ones actually seige trolling.

Which of course would be an abuse of the reporting system, and should be actioned accordingly.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

pdavis.8031:

Michael:

Would it be possible, or appropriate, to perodically post statics of people being actioned without revealing names, account info, or anything.

Something like:
Last month
22 people were warned about being abusive in chat.
37 people were suspended for disrupting game play
13 people were banned for using thirdy party cheat programs.
etc.

Something like this would go a long way to show that something is being done about such people. As it is now, we hear so little and see even less in game to even consider that the GMs are doing something. Which leads to many many people believe that such behavior is acceptable because as those people were saying “Anet doesn’t do anything so why does it matter?”

Just a thought….

Yes, anything that ANet can do to let us know that action is taken regularly would be helpful. Obviously, doubters are still gonna doubt, but there are many players who would be more likely to spend the time needed to make a verifiable report, if they knew that their actions are likely to result in action…instead of inaction.

I’m sure you guys do internal metrics regularly, since that’s how you know if your policies are effective, so maybe some of that could be “cleaned up” for the public.

I know Michael already does this on a much smaller level. As shown in this thread, and the GM proheals thread, but something a bit more would go along way in the eyes of the players.

pdavis.8031:

I know Michael already does this on a much smaller level. As shown in this thread, and the GM proheals thread, but something a bit more would go along way in the eyes of the players.

Oh does he? I’d love to see this as a quarterly blog feature. “This week in GM Proheal’s Tyria!”

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

pdavis.8031:

I know Michael already does this on a much smaller level. As shown in this thread, and the GM proheals thread, but something a bit more would go along way in the eyes of the players.

Oh does he? I’d love to see this as a quarterly blog feature. “This week in GM Proheal’s Tyria!”

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

Michael Henninger.7451

Gus suspended the account. I believe it was for two weeks. They were caught placing irrelevant siege to block placement of legitimate siege. We also saw their placement of 50 or so siege as well as ‘stacking’ interact objects (plates of food, for example).

If they violate again the accounts held by them will be terminated.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Have a bowl of facts:

I was there for three hours, cleared that guild, found the real person who placed the siege, and yes; placed one suspension for abuse of the reporting system.

Yes he does. So there is already a precedence for such things, but something more to reassure players that these things are taken seriously and not tolerated. Which is one of the biggest complaints in WvW, that players are doing these things and it doesn’t seem that anything is being done.

I would totally suscribe to that blog!

Hexin.5603:

Said it before and say it again … just add the name of the person to the end of the siege name…. “superior flame ram by hexin.5603”

I LOVE this idea! I’m always trying to find out who placed siege, so I can give them tips on better placement (I run server initiatives on things like siege placement).

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

First off, let me just say again that myself and others really appreciate the fact that you and other ANet staff are very actively policing WvW and communicating with us about it over the forums. You’re taking on extra work and voluntarily posting in this semi-toxic subforum, which isn’t always easy.

Second of all, just wanted to point out that TC folks that reported the guild in question weren’t doing so as an abuse of the report feature. They ported into TC garrison (which usually has 1650 – 1700 supply), saw that it only had <100 supply, saw a member of said guild physically take supply from a depot, and use said supply to build a 25th trebuchet while a few other members are hopping around the other 24 trebs built around the supply depot. Even if your in-game data cleared them, at least one of them was actively participating in this and got reported for it (maybe he’s the one that got caught, I don’t know).

Most TC players have just seen this way too often and are tired of it. I can see instances where abusing the report system should be punished, but having legit players just trying to play WvW normally and reporting what appears to be blatant siege griefing shouldn’t be one of them.

Michael Henninger.7451:

… I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account…

I’m glad to hear this is still being pursued. The last WvW season was…. very frustrating with regard to siege trolls.

Couldn’t Anet make it so you can only drop rams in a “X” radius of gates in the first place? other siege would be harder but at least other siege wouldn’t be completely useless

Michael Henninger.7451:

As for the reporting abuse we’re not going to take action on an account for reporting someone we find to be innocent. The account in question did far more than that. Also, please do NOT encourage other players to join in and hit the report button based on “I saw them do it” because this will land a suspension in most cases.

Quick clarification: I can see where “Everybody, I saw GM Noobheals flyhacking, everybody report him!” could be troubling, but how about asking other people in the area to also report?

You guys have said previously that “report velocity” (lots of reports in a short time) helps prioritize who you’re investigating, so I’ve always suggested that my partymates and other people in the area also report people cheating/griefing.

I’d be pretty upset for getting a suspension because I told my guild to report a guy we’re watching cheat.

Michael Henninger.7451:

I investigated this last night and the claims are false. I found the person that was placing siege and terminated that account.

Also, remember that false reporting can lead to a suspension or termination of your account.

For what reason was this player’s account terminated? They were playing the game as they wanted, there isnt anything in the terms saying you cannot build useless siege so…???
And what will happen in those matches where you completely dominate the matchup, the commander thrown down a ram, and then a random player throws down a dozen ballista blueprints? We laugh at it sometimes cos we’re so bored we’d actually build them sometimes for a laugh. Are you now saying this person who threw those ballistas can get suspended from the game if now reported?

Michael Henninger.7451:

Off-topic: Go TC!

Matchup threads are not allowed!

If you give a way to remove siege, the trolls will remove your legit siege. Whether siege is legit or not is easy for a human to determine but hard to automate. The only way to stop this behavior is banning people.

Now if supply-drain griefing were ever acted upon, that’d be something.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’d love to see this as a quarterly blog feature. “This week in GM Proheal’s Tyria!”

pdavis.8031:

I would totally suscribe to that blog!

Michael Henninger.7451:

Hmm… this could be fun.

Excellent. Looking forward to it.
(Assuming you have the time and the Powers That Be sign off on it.)

Exeon.4358:

Couldn’t Anet make it so you can only drop rams in a “X” radius of gates in the first place? other siege would be harder but at least other siege wouldn’t be completely useless

As has been said countless times before, flame rams have other uses than just smacking gates. If you want to limit how players use siege, then just do like siegerazer, smack a tower, ring pops up, you wait to ‘cap’ the ring and then siege appears, build it, ram a gate. Yet some people are going to think this would be a good idea too >.<