Guild Wars 2

Here is what happened. We were following a commander in WvW map. S/He decided it would be a “good” plan to camp our squad of 20 people in front of an enemies home spawning base. The squad was there to kill of enemies one by one.

I was on the attackers side but I feel the enemies were very frustasted by this tactic. For the record I left the squad after a minute once I realised what was going on. The commander and his squad did it for another 5-10 mins.

I see no possible benefit in this “tactic” since you get minimal wEXP for killing people that just spawned so I think it’s just a very desturbing tactic for the enemies to face. I know it’s a WvW format but still only annyoing other people should not be encouraged.

Could/Should I report this commander?

No, because they haven’t done anything wrong against the rules of the game and I have no doubt given the chance an opposing side would have considered the same tactic had the opportunity arisen. It’s also impossible for Anet to enforce/punish such a scenario.

Haven’t said that, I can see where you are coming from and you did the right thing in leaving if you felt it was morally unfair. That’s about the only option you had

I don’t think this is reportable. Spawn camping happens once in a while, and becomes useless once people smarten up and use one of, at least, 2 other exits that they have available (if you’re in someone else’s BL).
Plus, if you can tell it’s not worth your time, move on. Commanders should have followers based on their reputation, and you should not be afraid to call them out if you see that they’re wasting people’s time. How are newbies going to realize that what the commander is doing is idiotic if no one speaks out? For all they know, this could be a par for the course, legitimate, practical tactic.

This was Eternal Battlefields and their only other WP was not available since it was contested. There was no other way to reenter the battlefield besides getting killed by the squad.

PVP encourages this behaviour due to its very nature. It is unethical and dirty but since it is what it is designed for I don’t think it is banable.

That still doesn’t make much sense. You cannot literally ever be inside a spawn point, because of the legendary guards. You can only be blocking one of the exits from the spawn. And in EB, you could always find a way to get around a group.

Anyhow, I don’t agree with this tactic either, especially because you can so easily get around it anyway – why do you think they were getting one person at a time? Because others were avoiding them.

But there are 3 exits….

Gryffindors gotta griff!

In WvW, do people re spawn in places like borderkeeps in DAoC? Meh, whenever that happened (people camping our portal keep in emain) We just told peeps to stay inside because they are camping the outside, then told everyone out in emain that they were there.

Eventually they got hit from both sides.

kristijanH.1897:

This was Eternal Battlefields and their only other WP was not available since it was contested. There was no other way to reenter the battlefield besides getting killed by the squad.

Your squad of 20 people was covering 3 completely separate exits?

Banned? For this?

No. There is a PvP solution to this problem and that is taking out the camping squad. Simple. Where there is, effectively, no counter play available then Anet would need to do something about it.

I’ve seen this. We had a commander set up a bunch of siege and leave a group camped between Hill and Overlook. I assumed it was so we could better secure Overlook and other captured locations in the area, but maybe it was just for the lulz.

IMHO, this is nothing like spawn camping in other games. There’s no spawn killing and the enemy team is quite able to group up and push the campers out. If they choose to run at a zerg 1 by 1, that’s their problem.

Cutting the enemy’s supply/reinforcement lines is standard military practice. This was the point of sieging a castle. WvWvW is a war zone. Trying to distinguish between military tactics and “griefing” would be impossible, since the point of war is to grief your opponent. As a bit of advice, wait at your spawn point until you have a large enough group to take out the siege. Also, I believe there are NPC commanders at the EB spawn points. I haven’t checked the ones in the EB but the ones in your home borderland take 10 players to start the event. Having fought them, I can say these NPC commanders are rather tough. If you cannot manage this, I don’t know what to say.

Alloy.2839:

Cutting the enemy’s supply/reinforcement lines is standard military practice. This was the point of sieging a castle. WvWvW is a war zone. Trying to distinguish between military tactics and “griefing” would be impossible, since the point of war is to grief your opponent. As a bit of advice, wait at your spawn point until you have a large enough group to take out the siege. Also, I believe there are NPC commanders at the EB spawn points. I haven’t checked the ones in the EB but the ones in your home borderland take 10 players to start the event. Having fought them, I can say these NPC commanders are rather tough. If you cannot manage this, I don’t know what to say.

I couldn’t have said it better.

It’s actually a good strategy to camp the spawn points. Stop reinforcements while you siege their keep. This would stop a good majority of people as people don’t like to be camped, and would leave WvW; and, some don’t know about the other two exits, or don’t care enough to go to them. A strategy of defenders of Stonemist castle is to guard the open gate/wall and camp those that trail in. The attackers will eventually loose enough people and without a steady stream of reinforcements, the attack will fail.

Not only should they be banned but they should pay the ultimate price – their life. A public execution with the victims present. Id suggest a big pool were we can tie up the perpetrator , and have all the victims stand around the pool and recount their trauma while slowly filling the pool with their tears until the accused is drowned.

Sun Tzu says war is about deception not honour.

If you’re fighting in a war for honour, you’re dead.

Everything hes done is legit in warfare, there is no “fairness”

kristijanH.1897:

Here is what happened. We were following a commander in WvW map. S/He decided it would be a “good” plan to camp our squad of 20 people in front of an enemies home spawning base. The squad was there to kill of enemies one by one.

I was on the attackers side but I feel the enemies were very frustasted by this tactic. For the record I left the squad after a minute once I realised what was going on. The commander and his squad did it for another 5-10 mins.

I see no possible benefit in this “tactic” since you get minimal wEXP for killing people that just spawned so I think it’s just a very desturbing tactic for the enemies to face. I know it’s a WvW format but still only annyoing other people should not be encouraged.

Could/Should I report this commander?

No, please no. I hate to say “Carebear”, but that’s totally what you’re asking here.

A.Net specifically designed Break Out Events to counter this kind of camping. So…it’s allowed because they have their own count against it in the form of using the Break Out Event to plow through your group. Yet also to note is that all spawns have 3 ways to exit, thus they can go other ways besides the main front exit.

“our squad of 20 people in front of an enemies home spawning base”

So you were camped while camping a spawn base. In most games spawn camping is considered bad form. Yet your asking for sympathy because someone chose to defend it?

I don’t see why someone should be banned for winning.

kristijanH.1897:

This was Eternal Battlefields and their only other WP was not available since it was contested. There was no other way to reenter the battlefield besides getting killed by the squad.

Id say its a good tactic then by not allowing people resing from the home spawn to rejoin the main battle.

There is no such thing as fair in war.

And they could have easily called out in map chat what was going on got everyone together to wipe 20 people lol.

Digikid.7230:

But there are 3 exits….

Seriously…

And if they have those 3 covered with enough people to prevent your escape then pick something else to do because you have no chance.

I created this thread to start a discussion. Thank you all for your replies. I guess my conception of what is fun in a game differs from most of players on these boards. I play games to have fun. I expect that other people play it to have fun also and not to make the play experiance misserable for others. That’s why I prefer to play single player games since it’s up to me alone how the game is played. PvE is also good here since people are helping each other. I don’t mind the competitive spect as long at it’s within my boundry of what’s fun for me.

To all that are comparing this game or any aspect of it to war. Please don’t. It’s a game. Nothing more. You cannot disconnect when in a war or do other stuff when you’re tired of it.

There are 3 exits in each portal keep you know…

WvW is a war. A war to determine whose server is best. The saying goes all’s fair in love and war. So, this isn’t an exploit, it kills enemy morale, but if they’ve lost so much it’s come to the point where you can lock them in their base, you don’t have much choice.

However, the commander’s job is to inspire their squad and direct them towards a single purpose. Morale will almost always suffer when you order troops to perform a morally ambiguous act. There’s no punishment in this war for walking away (unless you’re in some kinda crazy WvW guild) and there’s definitely no punishment for being human. You will do your job better if you feel what you’re doing is right and the commander will do their job better if they know how their squad is doing. The entire squad could be against the commander, but they just can’t bring themselves to declare it.

The commander will notice something’s gone wrong though when their squad’s suddenly halved in size.

If the other team doesn’t organize a counter-squad, they deserve to be picked off one by one. It is a very legitimate tactic in a warlike environment to cut off reinforcements. Mind your supply lines, more than one general learned that on the road to Moscow.

I get where the OP Is coming from.

Asking about this is not “being a carebear”, it’s actually a reasonable concern for the long-term health of the game. If WvW becomes too un-fun for too many people, everybody loses.

However, this isn’t griefing, nor is it an unreasonable tactic or an exploit. It’s a cheap, lazy and low-scoring tactic which really only works well when most of the players you are facing are inexperienced in WvW, and/or not communicating well. Still, it has it’s place, usually in preventing enemies from building up or reaching a specific objective.

I support the OP in leaving the group he did – indeed I would have encouraged him to express his misgivings (politely) to the others in the squad (though not to expect a welcoming response from all!), but again, this isn’t griefing, this is just cheap and reliant on enemy inexperience. Does it make it less fun for people arriving? Yes, sadly, it does. However, in any PvP game, some stuff is going to make your experience less fun, especially in an RvR-type game. Any player who can’t handle that is unlikely to enjoy WvWvW in the longer-term.

I don’t understand what’s unethical or unfair with this kind of scenario. I feel like the people who are defending against such a tactic are being elitists. 1 commander would make all the difference. If an entire server is shutdown by 20 people camping your spawn point, considering the fact that 10 people would’ve activated the breakout event, then you don’t deserve anything from that battleground.

It isn’t dirty, it isn’t immoral, cheap or illegal. It’s a strategy. Stop being holier-than-thou. Obnoxious piety is more annoying.

Leo Paul.1659:

I don’t understand what’s unethical or unfair with this kind of scenario. I feel like the people who are defending against such a tactic are being elitists. 1 commander would make all the difference. If an entire server is shutdown by 20 people camping your spawn point, considering the fact that 10 people would’ve activated the breakout event, then you don’t deserve anything from that battleground.

It isn’t dirty, it isn’t immoral, cheap or illegal. It’s a strategy. Stop being holier-than-thou. Obnoxious piety is more annoying.

It’s cheap, it’s lazy, it doesn’t even score well. It’s not a skilled task performed by brave, clever people. At best It’s the RvR equivalent of stacking the shelves at the supermarket.

Don’t attempt to glorify it.

Also, don’t pretend it’s always an actual “strategy”.

It is a strategy when it is being used to a greater end – i.e. preventing people getting to Stonemist or the like. Then it is a strategy.

It is just a lazy way to farm noobs and score some easy points when it is not being used to achieve a greater objective. That’s why I call it cheap. In that situation, it absolutely is cheap.

That’s not the same as griefing, though. The objective isn’t to upset other players. The objective is to gain points with virtually no risk (but you gain so few it’s barely worth it, frankly – still, people often don’t see that).

TLDR: If it’s part of a strategy, it’s fine. If it’s lazy noob farm, it’s lame, but not griefing.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Leo Paul.1659:

I don’t understand what’s unethical or unfair with this kind of scenario. I feel like the people who are defending against such a tactic are being elitists. 1 commander would make all the difference. If an entire server is shutdown by 20 people camping your spawn point, considering the fact that 10 people would’ve activated the breakout event, then you don’t deserve anything from that battleground.

It isn’t dirty, it isn’t immoral, cheap or illegal. It’s a strategy. Stop being holier-than-thou. Obnoxious piety is more annoying.

It’s cheap, it’s lazy, it doesn’t even score well. It’s not a skilled task performed by brave, clever people. At best It’s the RvR equivalent of stacking the shelves at the supermarket.

Don’t attempt to glorify it.

Also, don’t pretend it’s always an actual “strategy”.

It is a strategy when it is being used to a greater end – i.e. preventing people getting to Stonemist or the like. Then it is a strategy.

It is just a lazy way to farm noobs and score some easy points when it is not being used to achieve a greater objective. That’s why I call it cheap. In that situation, it absolutely is cheap.

That’s not the same as griefing, though. The objective isn’t to upset other players. The objective is to gain points with virtually no risk (but you gain so few it’s barely worth it, frankly – still, people often don’t see that).

TLDR: If it’s part of a strategy, it’s fine. If it’s lazy noob farm, it’s lame, but not griefing.

And so the basis and amount of a gain or an advantage has to be defined by whose standards again in order for it to qualify as a strategy, yours? Ultimately, it serves a purpose, whether it is the optimum choice or not is up for debate, but anyone’s moral compass shouldn’t go haywire about it. Again, what’s so unethical about it that it has to labeled “unfair”?

kristijanH.1897:

I created this thread to start a discussion. Thank you all for your replies. I guess my conception of what is fun in a game differs from most of players on these boards. I play games to have fun. I expect that other people play it to have fun also and not to make the play experiance misserable for others. That’s why I prefer to play single player games since it’s up to me alone how the game is played. PvE is also good here since people are helping each other. I don’t mind the competitive spect as long at it’s within my boundry of what’s fun for me.

To all that are comparing this game or any aspect of it to war. Please don’t. It’s a game. Nothing more. You cannot disconnect when in a war or do other stuff when you’re tired of it.

Other people may have a different perspective when it comes to fun.. you just got out smarted.. next consider having some kind of rear guard so that u can fall back/ respawn in a safer environment or set up your own choke points along their reinforcement routes.
Like others have said.. surely the one of the major factor in a successful WvWvW battle is to reduce your enemy to the point they are strangle held… by cutting of reinforcements does exactly that… you could assume the same tactic from a defence point of view as well.. just need a bit of smart cookie thinking and your fun factor will only increase with it.

Leo Paul.1659:

And so the basis and amount of a gain or an advantage has to be defined by whose standards again in order for it to qualify as a strategy, yours? Ultimately, it serves a purpose, whether it is the optimum choice or not is up for debate, but anyone’s moral compass shouldn’t go haywire about it. Again, what’s so unethical about it that it has to labeled “unfair”?

I didn’t label it “unfair”, don’t misquote me, I labelled it “cheap”, “skill-less” and “lazy”. All of which it is. The whole point is to engage in a totally one-sided no-risk fight against players who are too inexperienced to know to avoid it.

There’s a reason we associate taking candy from babies with bad people, y’know?

And no, it doesn’t serve any real purpose unless part of a greater strategy, because the rewards are so thin. It’s not even equivalent to killing one mob over and over when it respawns, because the players are worth almost nothing after they die once. Whether it’s optimum is not up for debate. It is not optimum for anything but attempting to prevent people reaching a specific objective.

Bloodstealer.5978:

you just got out smarted..

Dude. No.

Re-read his post.

He was in the group who were killing the noobs, he wasn’t the noobs.

I just have to start by saying one thing.

People here are horribly bad at reading comprehension. I’ve seen several answers in here from people that clearly havent understood what the O kitten aying.

Hes not complaining that he or his group got camped, hes complaining about his group camping the enemy starting WP.

Having said that. I see nothing wrong with this tactic. It’s an old tactic, even from a historical perspective, it’s been used since the first war most likely. It’s nothing but a very smart thing to do, cutting of your enemies reserves or “camping” a spot where your enemy has dug in.

But there are always way to overcome it. In WvW there are 3 exits. 20/3 = 6.66, thats 6-7 men per exit if they want to keep it on lockdown, thats not very big numbers. And once one exit is clear, you can can move on and clear the rest. If they focus on just one exit, then you can leave your camp as you see fit.

Whats the issue?

Eurhetemec.9052:

Leo Paul.1659:

And so the basis and amount of a gain or an advantage has to be defined by whose standards again in order for it to qualify as a strategy, yours? Ultimately, it serves a purpose, whether it is the optimum choice or not is up for debate, but anyone’s moral compass shouldn’t go haywire about it. Again, what’s so unethical about it that it has to labeled “unfair”?

I didn’t label it “unfair”, don’t misquote me, I labelled it “cheap”, “skill-less” and “lazy”. All of which it is. The whole point is to engage in a totally one-sided no-risk fight against players who are too inexperienced to know to avoid it.

There’s a reason we associate taking candy from babies with bad people, y’know?

And no, it doesn’t serve any real purpose unless part of a greater strategy, because the rewards are so thin. It’s not even equivalent to killing one mob over and over when it respawns, because the players are worth almost nothing after they die once. Whether it’s optimum is not up for debate. It is not optimum for anything but attempting to prevent people reaching a specific objective.

My original post from where the unfair part was referring to the person who did say it was (2nd poster iirc, admittedly: tl;dr). Assuming these people who are getting owned by spawn campers as inexperienced is an idealistic generalization.

Preventing people from reaching a specific objective is a valid strategy to me (or tactic, or whatever). What kind of people falls victim to it is inconsequential in wvw; we have no definite means of determining how big a threat these people would become if they are allowed to wander past their spawn camp. Thus, it shouldn’t dictate what kind of a person the commander who employed said tactic is (lazy, cheap or unskilled).

Remember that I opt to define the action in its generality though. I cannot make a separation based on the TYPE or NUMBER of people the strategy is used on as some means of determinant on the action’s “legitimacy”.

tl;dr: it shouldn’t diminish any commander if he chooses to employ it generally speaking.

Is this a troll thread?

Dear god, mate – If you think that’s griefing then please stay away from pvp from now on.

Lol you think that is bad. I have been on when one of the other servers was camping all 3 exits lol.

This is not griefing, this is frowned upon and usually only done by guilds that are mad cuz bad. They are not able to kill anyone but Pugs running out 1 by 1 from spawn with their group of 10.

Pity the spawn campers cuz they are bad and go out another exit.

Demotivating the opponents is a tactic. Secondly, they can’t form a group to fight a small group like 20 people? There are side exits, why people dont know the map?

Finally, if you want to take a keep or tower close to the enemies spawn point then it is needed to have a small team slow down reinforcement.

Besides that, it is not against the rules and Anet made side exits & invisibility buffs knowing that this will happen and is allowed to happen.

kristijanH.1897:

Here is what happened. We were following a commander in WvW map. S/He decided it would be a “good” plan to camp our squad of 20 people in front of an enemies home spawning base. The squad was there to kill of enemies one by one.

I was on the attackers side but I feel the enemies were very frustasted by this tactic. For the record I left the squad after a minute once I realised what was going on. The commander and his squad did it for another 5-10 mins.

I see no possible benefit in this “tactic” since you get minimal wEXP for killing people that just spawned so I think it’s just a very desturbing tactic for the enemies to face. I know it’s a WvW format but still only annyoing other people should not be encouraged.

Could/Should I report this commander?

Only if we ban the people that try to kill me as I run in a tower/keep to defend it while they are sieging it…IE: no.

Spawn camping is meh, but it does have its uses. Such as on EB when taking an opposing keep the respawn point is relatively close. This allows the defensive team opportunity to simply play with reckless abandon, or out-and-out suicide at siege since the run back is so short.

Therefore camping the spawn in this situation should be understandable, as it cuts their reinforcements, while making them play somewhat of a different style. Also it is not unheard of for someone to map over to another BL and grab supply, map back and bring it into a sieged keep/tower to help build siege….Therefore bypassing the fact that the offensive force has likely cutoff the supply camps ahead of time. So spawn camping can help this situation as well.

Personally I have been on both sides of the equation, and I can say its frustrating when you are being camped, and its quite boring while you are doing the camping. Not a great way to play for long stretches but does have some merit in overall strategy/tactics when used as such.

In the end, like others have said, don’t do it if you don’t like it and there are breakout events designed to “work-around” this kind of tactic….

This is 100% legit. Every spawn has 3 exits and every team has team chat with which they can attempt to organize a push.

kristijanH.1897:

Here is what happened. We were following a commander in WvW map. S/He decided it would be a “good” plan to camp our squad of 20 people in front of an enemies home spawning base. The squad was there to kill of enemies one by one.

I was on the attackers side but I feel the enemies were very frustasted by this tactic. For the record I left the squad after a minute once I realised what was going on. The commander and his squad did it for another 5-10 mins.

I see no possible benefit in this “tactic” since you get minimal wEXP for killing people that just spawned so I think it’s just a very desturbing tactic for the enemies to face. I know it’s a WvW format but still only annyoing other people should not be encouraged.

Could/Should I report this commander?

No, ArenaNet should be banning you if you dare to file false reports like this.

This is not griefing, this is valid tactics.

It works in EB. Doesn’t work so well in the BLs as there are 3 other exits. Remember though there are 4 WvW maps, so you can always push out on another map to break this press. Had some fun once with the DH zerg pressing our start in EB, and we built siege behind the legendary guards and farmed DH for quite some time.

Are you guys even answering this seriously?

This is the answer, you are looking for:

This was Eternal Battlefields and their only other WP was not available since it was contested. There was no other way to reenter the battlefield besides getting killed by the squad.

The other WP was contested. Why? Because it was under attack by your server, perhaps?
So if your guys are killing a defender in their keep, where does he go?
He respawns at the spawn. So, if your team can not capture the keep fast, their server will have the upper hand due to having short respawn routes back from their spawn and an easy way to call in reinforcements.
To counter the possibility of fighting an endless army of constantly respawning banner warriors possibly rezzing the keep lord 20 or more times, or to counter any reinforcements which might come to defend the keep, the commander decided to seal their spawn, so your server can take the keep without any problems.