Guild Wars 2

I’ve come across this before. You throw a piece of siege, get a few people to start building it, and it suddenly disappears. (This is new as of the last patch.)

It hasn’t been as problematic as it was tonight. My team lost our NE tower on our home BL. So, I tried to treb it from garrison. We lost 4 trebs (I threw three before giving up, someone else threw the fourth) due to this glitch. No worries. We decided to take it the old-fashioned style: rams. Well, those wouldn’t stick either, and they kept despawning.

When I’m commanding, I rely heavily on my pick-ups and I work hard to make sure they’re having a good time. After all, if I perform poorly, they won’t have fun. I’ll lose numbers, and they’ll walk away feeling feeble. This isn’t what I want.

Whatever this bug is, it’s breaking my pin. My followers were patient when we struggled, but I’m not comfortable trying to lead using mechanics that are broken.

EDIT: From this thread, it appears that this bug is tied to the Siege Deployment Block that is ineffect in spawn points. Infrequently, when a person leaves the spawn point, the siege block icon disappears but is still active. If the bugged person attempts to put supply into a build site, the build site despawns. (This is a safety mechanism so people can’t build a siege in a no siege zone by standing just outside the zone and throwing it in.) The only way a person knows if s/he is bugged is if s/he tries to place siege and the “You can not place siege here” message pops up. Relogging is an effective solution. It has also been recommended that repairing a wall/gate can clear the bug. Devs are actively working on a fix.

Had this happen to me on more than one occasion today. Ended up losing in total about 10 superiors today, not a huge amount but enough to be frustrating.

One disappearance happened as we were in the process of being attacked, I was dropping multiple siege in the lords room. All pieces were fully built in front of me, I even had a chance to test fire one to get it turned the right direction before it went poof. If the siege hadn’t disappeared we probably could have held off the invaders.

I’ve started a thread in the Game Bug forums, as well as an in game bug report, might want to drop this into that thread or start your own as it may get the proper attention there. Here’s hoping that it’s fixed soon.

This has happened lots on Aurora Glade. It actually appears some players get bugged.
The same player can cause all siege to disappear when they try to build. This can then be fixed by getting that player to repair a wall/gate etc. Seems to reset their siege building bug and stop the despawns.

Hope this helps work out what the hell is going on.

Hi everyone,

We are forwarding this to the team. Please keep providing us with as much feedback as possible.

Thanks

,yep we have noticed that bug too on VS, mainly with rams. You throw it, you start building and it suddenly disapear.

This happened to me today, one great way to get rid of my gold fast.

threw down blueprint/building-site, way-pointed to get back on the hill I threw it on, started building and it disappeared.

I lost sup treb, 1-2 regular ones, 2 sup catas and couple rams this way

thanks to the moderator for forwarding this to the team! Thank YOU!!!!

for more information on this, here is a link to the 2 other threads that were merged for us.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Siege-despawning-while-beeing-build-Merged/first#post1961083

But the OP stated he threw down multiple siege in Garrison, not the spawn? Or is Garrison considered a starting area now? I doubt he as commander threw down siege, started building it and then jumped to base, only to jump back, throw down another siege and repeat the process 3 times.

Unless of course it wasnt garrison, but the citadel.

It was definitely NOT near siege deployment blocked area – most of siege I was talking about was gone nearby north gate of Hills, some other west of NW tower

DevonCarver.5370:

Has anyone noticed if the person that causes the siege to disappear has the siege deployment blocked icon on them? The fix to prevent people from building siege in the starter areas causes people with the on them to destroy any siege they try and build, which seems like it might be the root cause here as I believe there are still some weird issues that can cause you to continue to have that on you, even outside the intended areas.

People can still build siege in front of their spawn at Borderlands in a place where they can’t be hit. We can kill that siege obviously with ranged attacks but is it intended?

I too had this experience.
I set a cata blueprint near the south wall at the ne tower to sneakily take it back.
My group started building said catapult. The guy finishing the cata got a message like “you cannot place siege weapons here” and poof the finished cata was gone.

3 minutes our commander came buy, built two rams and the tower was ours.

I think if something cant be built somewhere it should be checked BEFORE putting supplies in and waste blueprints like it is/was always.

Also I don’t understand how ANet (as DevonCarver stated) handles players with buff trying to build a siege weapon. Why is a correctly placed siege weapon/blueprint despawned if a not allowed player tries to assist in building it? he just shouldn’t be able to do anything…
If someone has said buff on (bug or not) he shouldn’t be allowed to interact (and activly causing a despawn) with unbuilt siege.

It isn’t anything to do with the spawn area. We had this problem at hills, bay, briar and lake towers all on the same night. Ended up losing about 15-20 blueprints and about 400 supply when all was said and done.

I’m guessing it is due to the siege timer with despawning blueprints.

Not sure if this is related, but last nigth in EB at Durios Post we could drop rams at the gate, but as soon as it was layed it dissappeared. There was nobody defending so it was not destroyed from damage.

DevonCarver.5370:

Has anyone noticed if the person that causes the siege to disappear has the siege deployment blocked icon on them?

Thanks for the response, Devon and Moderator!

I was definitely away from the starting zone, though I wasn’t actively looking at my boon bar to see if the siege deployment block was on. Unless someone can report sooner, I’ll keep an eye on that tonight.

Aside: There was speculation that if a commander puts supply into a build site, it speeds up the timer by a crazy amount. I tried deploying and building with my pin on and off and received the same effect. Friends who don’t own a pin also had their siege despawn, so i think we can dispel that one.

Burl.9567:

It isn’t anything to do with the spawn area. We had this problem at hills, bay, briar and lake towers all on the same night. Ended up losing about 15-20 blueprints and about 400 supply when all was said and done.

I’m guessing it is due to the siege timer with despawning blueprints.

I think what Devon was asking is if the Siege Deployment Block stuck to a person after leaving the spawn area (there’s an icon in you boon bar when you are in the spawn area). So, if that block didn’t come off after leaving, we wouldn’t be able to build siege anywhere on the map. This would only effect some people, but not all.

This could explain why a ninja group was able to recap that NE tower with siege after I left. (When I’m commanding, I place most of the siege myself.)

Nikked.7365:

Burl.9567:

It isn’t anything to do with the spawn area. We had this problem at hills, bay, briar and lake towers all on the same night. Ended up losing about 15-20 blueprints and about 400 supply when all was said and done.

I’m guessing it is due to the siege timer with despawning blueprints.

I think what Devon was asking is if the Siege Deployment Block stuck to a person after leaving the spawn area (there’s an icon in you boon bar when you are in the spawn area). So, if that block didn’t come off after leaving, we wouldn’t be able to build siege anywhere on the map. This would only effect some people, but not all.

This could explain why a ninja group was able to recap that NE tower with siege after I left. (When I’m commanding, I place most of the siege myself.)

In that case, no. As the siege would work for an individual one time, fail the next 4 and then randomly work again and start failing again after. I wish I was looking at the despawn timer on the siege when it failed, but I forgot to watch it as the siege was building to see if it was bonk.

As soon as people start putting supplies in it it disapears, it seems to be random.

What devon was saying is sometimes the debuff you get in spawn stays on you when you leave and when you put your supply into something with that debuff on it will get destroyed he was asking if anyone has seen if that was the problem or if it was a seperate incident

I think the problem Devon describes is exactly what’s happening. Somehow people are getting out of spawn with the “Siege Deployment Blocked” buff still on them, and whenever those people put supply into anything, it destroys the siege that they are attempting to build. This gives the appearance that siege ‘disappears’. All it takes is for the person to attempt to put supply into it, as well, even if they never actually get any supply put into it. This means that if the first person who tries to put supply into a siege has the buff, it’ll appear as though it disappeared for no reason. I can definitely confirm that this has happened on SBI in recent days, as we’ve lost a lot of superior siege that way.

Burl.9567:

Nikked.7365:

Burl.9567:

It isn’t anything to do with the spawn area. We had this problem at hills, bay, briar and lake towers all on the same night. Ended up losing about 15-20 blueprints and about 400 supply when all was said and done.

I’m guessing it is due to the siege timer with despawning blueprints.

I think what Devon was asking is if the Siege Deployment Block stuck to a person after leaving the spawn area (there’s an icon in you boon bar when you are in the spawn area). So, if that block didn’t come off after leaving, we wouldn’t be able to build siege anywhere on the map. This would only effect some people, but not all.

This could explain why a ninja group was able to recap that NE tower with siege after I left. (When I’m commanding, I place most of the siege myself.)

In that case, no. As the siege would work for an individual one time, fail the next 4 and then randomly work again and start failing again after. I wish I was looking at the despawn timer on the siege when it failed, but I forgot to watch it as the siege was building to see if it was bonk.

This may not be related to the person who throws the siege down – but the last person on the chain building who may have the boon buggedly still on them. There is a report above of several people building and getting no warning, then someone reported getting a warning then seeing the despawn.

This is going to be hard to manage with respect to reports since you may notice the despawn, check your boon bar and not seen the debuff but it may have been someone else who doesn’t check or notice that triggers the despawn.

Bloodwort MacFangho.4638:

Burl.9567:

Nikked.7365:

Burl.9567:

It isn’t anything to do with the spawn area. We had this problem at hills, bay, briar and lake towers all on the same night. Ended up losing about 15-20 blueprints and about 400 supply when all was said and done.

I’m guessing it is due to the siege timer with despawning blueprints.

I think what Devon was asking is if the Siege Deployment Block stuck to a person after leaving the spawn area (there’s an icon in you boon bar when you are in the spawn area). So, if that block didn’t come off after leaving, we wouldn’t be able to build siege anywhere on the map. This would only effect some people, but not all.

This could explain why a ninja group was able to recap that NE tower with siege after I left. (When I’m commanding, I place most of the siege myself.)

In that case, no. As the siege would work for an individual one time, fail the next 4 and then randomly work again and start failing again after. I wish I was looking at the despawn timer on the siege when it failed, but I forgot to watch it as the siege was building to see if it was bonk.

This may not be related to the person who throws the siege down – but the last person on the chain building who may have the boon buggedly still on them. There is a report above of several people building and getting no warning, then someone reported getting a warning then seeing the despawn.

This is going to be hard to manage with respect to reports since you may notice the despawn, check your boon bar and not seen the debuff but it may have been someone else who doesn’t check or notice that triggers the despawn.

Ah…it took a while, but I’m following the conversation now. I’ll be sure to ask around in map chat to see if any individuals are seeing this.

Nikked.7365:

I’ve come across this before. You throw a piece of siege, get a few people to start building it, and it suddenly disappears. (This is new as of the last patch.)

It hasn’t been as problematic as it was tonight. My team lost our NE tower on our home BL. So, I tried to treb it from garrison. We lost 4 trebs (I threw three before giving up, someone else threw the fourth) due to this glitch. No worries. We decided to take it the old-fashioned style: rams. Well, those wouldn’t stick either, and they kept despawning.

When I’m commanding, I rely heavily on my pick-ups and I work hard to make sure they’re having a good time. After all, if I perform poorly, they won’t have fun. I’ll lose numbers, and they’ll walk away feeling feeble. This isn’t what I want.

Whatever this bug is, it’s breaking my pin. My followers were patient when we struggled, but I’m not comfortable trying to lead using mechanics that are broken.

Your pin got nikked !

If Devon’s theory is correct and the “buff” sticking is the cause of this new problem, the whole approach still seems like a messy fix to the overall problem of people being able to build siege in areas it’s not supposed to be built.

By that I mean, what if you want to build a treb on the outside edge of a blocked area? If I understand Devon correctly, the prints could be in safe territory, and 9 players could put in supplies if they are standing on the safe side of the dividing line between blocked and unblocked, but then one person could try to put in supplies while standing on the “blocked” side of the line and destroy the build. Is that correct?

This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but there are times when you want to build siege as close to the blocked zone as possible. It seems like blocking a person from putting in supplies if they are standing in the blocked zone, would be much more logical/fair, as opposed to destroying prints that are in an unblocked zone just because one person had one foot in the “no no” zone.

After talking with the person we believe was having the issue last night, he did not have a debuff showing on his character, but he was getting a message that he could not drop siege. Once he determined this he relogged and came back into map, and was then able to drop and build siege without it disappearing. There was no attempt at building siege in Citadel, the debuff just carried over, without really carrying over if that makes sense.

The places I dropped siege that disappeared were the NE tower on our home borderland, I think it’s Dawn’s Eyrie this week, and Bay if this helps as far as placement.

The SF 15 man zerg had that happen last night in EB over and over as well at the walls of SM.

It happened after ANet pushed out a patch and statuses of Keeps/Towers/etc were still going on in the ‘background’ but not visible. So less harmful things like Keep upgrades would push on, but have no progress meter. But also, the status of SE tower on our borderlands changes and we were getting seige locked and our stuff was disappearing, which made it irritating and less than optimal to take.

Zoja.2631:

After talking with the person we believe was having the issue last night, he did not have a debuff showing on his character, but he was getting a message that he could not drop siege. Once he determined this he relogged and came back into map, and was then able to drop and build siege without it disappearing. There was no attempt at building siege in Citadel, the debuff just carried over, without really carrying over if that makes sense.

Makes sense with everything else presented here. No debuff icon means the affected person doesn’t realize it until they try to place siege and get the message. Someone who is unwittingly bugged that puts supply into a build site then causes it to disappear. After all, there are many players who help build siege, but often times only a handful that are placing it.

That’s all just my speculation, but having this possibility means that we can attempt workarounds until the fix is in place. (Try to organize so one person builds at a time, have the bugged person relog, have multiple people throw siege, etc.) Not ideal, but it’s better than having to abandon an objective because siege placement is failing.

DevonCarver.5370:

Has anyone noticed if the person that causes the siege to disappear has the siege deployment blocked icon on them? The fix to prevent people from building siege in the starter areas causes people with the on them to destroy any siege they try and build, which seems like it might be the root cause here as I believe there are still some weird issues that can cause you to continue to have that on you, even outside the intended areas.

This is a completely backwards way of implementing siege placement restrictions. The test of whether the siege is being placed in a restricted zone should be based on the blueprint’s location relative to said zone. It should not be the case that the restriction is based on whether or not a player has the “siege deployment blocked” icon on them.

I can fully appreciate the realities of the work-a-day business world where deadlines, cost:benefit, taking the easy way with shortcuts, failure to take into consideration long term or unintended consequences, and contingencies all factor into the equation. So something along the lines of:

Dev 1: We’re receiving bug reports of players building siege in invulnerable zones.

Project Lead: Solutions?

Dev 1: We can add new code to perform a test that compares the X and Y coordinates of a to-be-deployed siege blueprint against the X and Y coordinates of the invulnerable zones. If the siege blueprint falls within that zone, the siege won’t deploy and we’ll alert the player with a message on screen.

Dev 2: We already have a mechanic in place where a player in an invulnerable zone has an icon to that effect beneath their nameplate. We could code a simpler test that any player attempting to deploy siege who has that icon present will not be able to place their blueprint or otherwise destroys any siege they attempt to build (O_o !).

Project Lead: That sounds like the simpler option. Make it so, number two!

Then a few days, weeks, or months later, the bug or unintended consequence of this quick fix crops up. The solution then is to go back and code it the correct way. Ultimately, the “short cut” or “quick fix” actually winds up costing companies and developers more time and money due to double work than if they had just done it right the first time.

I see this kind of approach to programming on a daily basis. Take a lesson from carpentry: “Measure twice, cut once.”

Try looking at the arrowcart debuff first…

Another suggestion. Please change the throw distance of siege build sites from 1200 to 200. That would probably be a much cleaner and more effective method if you were looking at preventing people from throwing siege back up into their (invulnerable) starter zones.

There really is no need to be able to throw siege build sites 1200 range away from you.

Aveneo.2068:

Another suggestion. Please change the throw distance of siege build sites from 1200 to 200. That would probably be a much cleaner and more effective method if you were looking at preventing people from throwing siege back up into their (invulnerable) starter zones.

There really is no need to be able to throw siege build sites 1200 range away from you.

Like the current “fix,” this could both not cleanly fix the problem and also result in unintended consequences. If they don’t want siege to be built in certain areas they should strive to write code that prevents exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less. Seemingly eaasier said than done, but as already pointed out , you often pay double for for shortcuts in the long run.

slingblade.1437:

Like the current “fix,” this could both not cleanly fix the problem and also result in unintended consequences. If they don’t want siege to be built in certain areas they should strive to write code that prevents exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less. Seemingly eaasier said than done, but as already pointed out , you often pay double for for shortcuts in the long run.

From what I observed and tested, the only reason siege showed up in spots where they were not supposed to show up was because of the 1200 throw distance. As such I offer a suggestion for a potentially clean alternative which ANet could look into. And also because it makes no sense that I can throw siege as far away as I can shoot an arrow.

^^^ Without going into detail, there are legit reasons to throw siege farther than 200 in non-blocked areas. Restricting to 200 would break something to try to fix something else, and it might not completely fix anything. :p

Thanks for the community effort here! I kept an eye out tonight, but ran without any issues. Happy followers all around.

I assume the bug is still lurking. As the conversation is starting to derail, please let us know if there’s anything else to keep an eye on. Otherwise we leave it to the pros.

Thanks Devon for looking into this. I’ll be a much happier WvW’er if this gets fixed. Right now I’m uber paranoid about dropping superior siege. >.< Dropped a few superiors and a bunch of regular siege today without issue, but it seems to be erratic on when this bug happens.

Can confirm that some players are not losing their “No Siege Placement” buff on exiting spawn.

Thanks for the confirmation, Bethryn! I added an “EDIT” to the original post so those who are reading this for the first time know what is happening—and the steps being taken—without having to read the entire thread.

Build 3 AC on ramp inside garrison lord room overlooking inner watergate (to right of gate) whenever we built ac’s, the buildsite would be there but it would despawn as soon as it got built. tried both superiors and regulars… at the fifth try we got it built…