Guild Wars 2

This is the type of threads we would like to see, good work John! I like the idea of exhaustion, it could be a good way to at least hinder the siege trolls. The issue would be to find that perfect balance so commanders can still put down the necessary siege. All in all a very good idea though, and I think three minutes might be a good expiration time.

John Corpening.9847:

To kick off the brainstorm I’ll throw out this idea:

1. When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion”
2. A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes
3. If a player has three stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege

A good idea, but it has a problem:

Several EU servers are running a policy where only commander should deploy siege blueprints. This is to avoid each player throwing ram blueprints on the same gate and thus causing just confusing and players not having enough supplies to finish them. A commander can easily alone put 3-4 rams on one gate or set up 4 catapults to take down a reinforced wall with the current system or deploy more than 3 superior ACs to siege up a tower or a keep. Now he would need to wait to break in the inner keep or somebody else would be needing to deploy the siege. Siege blueprints are a big cost for PuG commanders (myself included), but some receive donations from their allies. Popular commanders are generally trusted by their community and the least likely to be trolls due their visible role in the game.

Siege building and ordering last minute upgrades is also used to burn the supplies in case the keep is full of them, it is surely falling to the enemy hands.

Removing the suggested “exhaustion” restrictions from those who have the commander tag up would not completely stop the abuse, but make it much rarer and more visible. Many now have a commander tag, but a typical siege troll has his main on the enemy server and and is using an alt account and often has an upleveled character, who doesn’t have a commander tag.

Neither of these address the intentional destruction of golems. I mean intentionally taking control of golems from waypoint and just walking them off the cliff.

I cannot invent a foolproof system to stop the siege trolling. My best advice is: use the ingame report tool and have more Arenanet employer or volunteers (among the player base), who handle the reported cases. Serious violations should lead to banning that account from entering WvWvW. Hacking is another issue, which would need human interaction. Infracting the players who report hackers and possibly denying them the access to these forums, is just aggravating the player base.

How about exhaustion be applied upon using supplies instead of dropping the siege? I can pretty much drop 3 trebs and waste 300 supplies under the 3 minute frame.

I’ll kick off a few ideas
(countering incorrect/inferior siege placement trolling)

• Individual caps for superior siege and normal siege. You can play with what the cap number actually is but make each class of siege count towards a different cap. That way you can build superior siege even when there is normal siege at a spot.
• Individual siege cap for each type of siege (replaces the above). Each type of siege gets its own siege cap. Weapon classes contribute to the same cap (normal and superior arrow carts for instance count toward the same siege cap).
• Build command F prefers to target superior siege when more than 1 weapon is on a stack. Build priority can be adjusted based on proximity to the nearest enemy structure part. It will prefer to build rams on gates and catapults near walls.
• A group of 10 or more players may vote to dismantle a siege weapon. They do this by each getting on the weapon and using a new “dismantle” skill on it. A dismantled weapon will distribute 50%(balance this return as you see fit, down to 0) of its supply cost to all nearby players once enough votes are in. If a weapon is dismantled inside a structure it will provide this return to the structure’s stockpile instead (balance this as you see fit too, to prevent “storing” supply in siege weapons).

Jeknar.6184:

How about exhaustion be applied upon using supplies instead of dropping the siege? I can pretty much drop 3 trebs and waste 300 supplies under the 3 minute frame.

That wouldn’t fix point 4, ballistas in front of gates for example.

In general I like the idea of exhaustion upon blueprint dropping, one side effect that may benefit gameplay in general would be that zergs have to organise to drop a handful of superior rams in front of a gate or sieging up towers. Probably the exhaustion could be removed early if the ram destroyed a gate.

Deniara Devious.3948:

John Corpening.9847:

To kick off the brainstorm I’ll throw out this idea:

1. When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion”
2. A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes
3. If a player has three stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege

This has problems:

Several EU servers are running a policy where only commander should deploy siege blueprints. He can easily alone put 3-4 rams on one gate or set up 4 catapults to take down a reinforced wall with the current system or deploy more than 3 superior ACs to siege up a tower or a keep. Now he would need to wait to break in the inner keep or somebody else would be needing to deploy the siege. Siege blueprints are a big cost for PuG commanders (myself included), but some receive donations from their allies. Popular commanders are generally trusted by their community and the least likely to be trolls due their visible role in the game.

Removing the suggested “exhaustion” restrictions from those who have the commander tag up would not completely stop the abuse, but make it much rarer and more visible. Many now have a commander tag, but a typical siege troll has his main on the enemy server and and is using an alt account and often has an upleveled character, who doesn’t have a commander tag.

I cannot invent a foolproof system stop the siege trolling. My best advice is: use the ingame report tool and have more Arenanet employer or volunteers (among the player base), who handle the reported cases. Serious violations should lead to banning that account from entering WvWvW. Hacking is another issue, which would need human interaction.

Because commander tags are fairly common, I recommend adding to this suggestion that might also hit two birds with one stone:

For every person in a Commander’s squad, exhaustion from placing siege is reduced by 1 minute (making it so only a few people in the squad would reduce this exhaustion to zero). Because of this, the natural ‘Exhaustion’ period could be something higher like 10 minutes.

What this will do:

- Promote people following a commander to join their squad (“Join my squad so I can drop siege!”). This habit will make it easier for commanders to check supply as well.
- Exhaustion will affect siege trolls who don’t tag up and also get multiple people to follow them. If they do happen to go to this extreme effort, they will be easily spotted on the map for what they are since they’ll have a tag up.
- Promote legitimate defenders to tag up to drop siege and to create a focal defense point for people to see on the map.

The exhaustion idea has merit, however, a limit of three seems a bit small considering you may want to quickly build a number of defensive siege when you see a blob storming your keep. I’d wager the griefers won’t be dissuaded no matter what cap is put in place. They’d just wait it out.

One small tweak, perhaps, would be to not allow flame rams to be created inside a tower, camp or inner keep (SM & Garrison). At least force the griefers to use something that has a modicum of value.

I think a system that allows siege to be destroyed by the player base would be a better way to go. Some sort of approval where some number of players concur that a piece of siege should be destroyed in any given area. It would be a lot harder to get a group of griefers together to remove siege than it is for them to create it.

John Corpening.9847:

Here are some parameters and questions we should consider:

• Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?
• What are the characteristics of bad behavior that are different than good behavior?
• How do we prevent bad behavior without making too big of an impact on good behavior?
• What restrictions might we be able to live with as good players in order to prevent bad behavior?

I think a fundamental problem here is that we’re trying to find a game mechanic to predict/fix player decisions. Any mechanic that gets put in place would just shift the troll behavior to something else without fixing the issue. I don’t think you can program your way out of this kind of problem.

I honestly think sending some GM’s out with a banhammer to exterminate trolls with extreme prejudice would do a lot at combating the trolls. It’s gotten out of hand because there’s no fear of repercussions. Show them there are consequences and many of them will either leave or get banned. Those that are left will be the die hard griefers but at least there will be fewer to deal with.

Once the majority of trolls are gone it would be easier to re-evaluate what kind of programming fixes could be made.

Jeknar.6184:

How about exhaustion be applied upon using supplies instead of dropping the siege? I can pretty much drop 3 trebs and waste 300 supplies under the 3 minute frame.

How will that work if you are all alone repairing a wall/gate or building defensive siege? Happens quite often that a dedicated scout or the few oddballs are fixing things while the commander runs away with the zerg towards new adventures or you are just in a tough outmanned situation.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

The exhaustion idea has merit, however, a limit of three seems a bit small considering you may want to quickly build a number of defensive siege when you see a blob storming your keep. I’d wager the griefers won’t be dissuaded no matter what cap is put in place. They’d just wait it out.

One small tweak, perhaps, would be to not allow flame rams to be created inside a tower, camp or inner keep (SM & Garrison). At least force the griefers to use something that has a modicum of value.

I think a system that allows siege to be destroyed by the player base would be a better way to go. Some sort of approval where some number of players concur that a piece of siege should be destroyed in any given area. It would be a lot harder to get a group of griefers together to remove siege than it is for them to create it.

Allow a squad to salvage siege for a percentage of supplies used to build it? Share those supplies among the squad members that aren’t full?

LumpOfCole.4701:

Because commander tags are fairly common, I recommend adding to this suggestion that might also hit two birds with one stone:

For every person in a Commander’s squad, exhaustion from placing siege is reduced by 1 minute (making it so only a few people in the squad would reduce this exhaustion to zero). Because of this, the natural ‘Exhaustion’ period could be something higher like 10 minutes.

What this will do:

- Promote people following a commander to join their squad (“Join my squad so I can drop siege!”). This habit will make it easier for commanders to check supply as well.
- Exhaustion will affect siege trolls who don’t tag up and also get multiple people to follow them. If they do happen to go to this extreme effort, they will be easily spotted on the map for what they are since they’ll have a tag up.
- Promote legitimate defenders to tag up to drop siege and to create a focal defense point for people to see on the map.

Now I don’t want to give ideas to anyone… but literally any player can join any commander. Even from enemy servers. So this isn’t a solution, the troll would just have a few people join their squad from the other server. Or from the guild.

The problem with exhaustion is that it affects legitimate use of siege. Perhaps the squad system could be used lesser this problem somewhat. Say commanders with x followers can place siege without exhaustion. Troll commanders are unlikely to have many followers so it shouldnt be as easy as it is now to abuse siege placement.

I think the vote to dismantle would alao be very useful, as the players themselves would then be able to negate the troll/s, since trolls are usually only a small minority.

Torsailr.8456:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

The exhaustion idea has merit, however, a limit of three seems a bit small considering you may want to quickly build a number of defensive siege when you see a blob storming your keep. I’d wager the griefers won’t be dissuaded no matter what cap is put in place. They’d just wait it out.

One small tweak, perhaps, would be to not allow flame rams to be created inside a tower, camp or inner keep (SM & Garrison). At least force the griefers to use something that has a modicum of value.

I think a system that allows siege to be destroyed by the player base would be a better way to go. Some sort of approval where some number of players concur that a piece of siege should be destroyed in any given area. It would be a lot harder to get a group of griefers together to remove siege than it is for them to create it.

Allow a squad to salvage siege for a percentage of supplies used to build it? Share those supplies among the squad members that aren’t full?

A commander with 10+ people in his/her squad should be able to destroy siege. The number can change depending on factors like Outmanned Buff.

What about a simple reporting system, sort of like how you can report someone specifically for botting or selling gold. Make a system where someone can be reported for “siege griefing”, and then if X number of reports from unique players is entered against a person, prevent them from deploying siege for X time frame (preferably lengthy, perhaps scaling with the number of times your account has been flagged as such?).

You’d probably have to play with the numbers a bit to find something fair/un-exploitable, but this kind of system would punish the griefers without hurting anybody else, as well as being automate-able. The downside is that it relies on a large(ish?) number of people being able to identify and report griefers on a regular basis. Idk, just throwing my thoughts out.

Howell Qagan.9752:

LumpOfCole.4701:

Because commander tags are fairly common, I recommend adding to this suggestion that might also hit two birds with one stone:

For every person in a Commander’s squad, exhaustion from placing siege is reduced by 1 minute (making it so only a few people in the squad would reduce this exhaustion to zero). Because of this, the natural ‘Exhaustion’ period could be something higher like 10 minutes.

What this will do:

- Promote people following a commander to join their squad (“Join my squad so I can drop siege!”). This habit will make it easier for commanders to check supply as well.
- Exhaustion will affect siege trolls who don’t tag up and also get multiple people to follow them. If they do happen to go to this extreme effort, they will be easily spotted on the map for what they are since they’ll have a tag up.
- Promote legitimate defenders to tag up to drop siege and to create a focal defense point for people to see on the map.

Now I don’t want to give ideas to anyone… but literally any player can join any commander. Even from enemy servers. So this isn’t a solution, the troll would just have a few people join their squad from the other server. Or from the guild.

Well that would have to be fixed then. Obviously, only followers who are actually in the right map and server should count.

Howell Qagan.9752:

Now I don’t want to give ideas to anyone… but literally any player can join any commander. Even from enemy servers. So this isn’t a solution, the troll would just have a few people join their squad from the other server. Or from the guild.

It would definitely have to be a tighter system before being implemented in this fashion, yes.

Howell Qagan.9752:

LumpOfCole.4701:

Because commander tags are fairly common, I recommend adding to this suggestion that might also hit two birds with one stone:

For every person in a Commander’s squad, exhaustion from placing siege is reduced by 1 minute (making it so only a few people in the squad would reduce this exhaustion to zero). Because of this, the natural ‘Exhaustion’ period could be something higher like 10 minutes.

What this will do:

- Promote people following a commander to join their squad (“Join my squad so I can drop siege!”). This habit will make it easier for commanders to check supply as well.
- Exhaustion will affect siege trolls who don’t tag up and also get multiple people to follow them. If they do happen to go to this extreme effort, they will be easily spotted on the map for what they are since they’ll have a tag up.
- Promote legitimate defenders to tag up to drop siege and to create a focal defense point for people to see on the map.

Now I don’t want to give ideas to anyone… but literally any player can join any commander. Even from enemy servers. So this isn’t a solution, the troll would just have a few people join their squad from the other server. Or from the guild.

I believe that fixing ‘that’ is (almost) as hard as the right-click → whisper for enemies or the not-visible commander buff pre-patch.
But commander tags should not be a way to limit siege-usage, as more trolls have commander tag (you know, 300g for a guild is nothing.. they can just buy it for the troll account) than new, but promising scouts who need to build sieges for defense.

Instead of exhaustion, what if we looked at it from a different angle. Alot of times when dealing with a problem I look at things in reverse order to come up with a solution. I do not know how much this would be possible, as I know it has taken a long time to implement colors for Commander tags due to constraints.

However, what if siege was able to be cancelled for a certain amount of time after placement. Within the first five seconds or something. This would unfortunately cancel any supply that had been put into it making that as a lost amount but at the same time if it was tied to a commander tag, it would give commanders more control.

Perhaps commanders could get a build (f-yellow) button and a destroy (X value-red) button that pops up when they stand over/near seige.

Pro’s-Commander have more control over siege placement to stop a troll or, even to cancel the throwing of a mistaken ram on SM’s wall…

Con’s-Like above there are trolls with commander tags that could tag up just to cancel however that is an obvious action that people will see, the popping of a tag right next to you.

This would help alleviate the problem.

Make it so that when you join a squad, you can only put supply on siege placed by the commander (excluding defensive siege like cannons and repairs of course). This will encourage commanders to place their own siege, this will encourage people to join squads, and it will stop trolls from wasting a squad’s supply. Sometimes well-meaning but inexperienced individuals can also interfere with a commander’s plans by placing siege at the wrong time, so this problem would also be resolved. A visual indicator on siege that is placed by other players or a chat notice when attempting to use supply will let players adjust (leave a squad) if they have to build siege placed by other players.

You could then conceivably also adjust the exhausted limit for commanders based on squad size. Then you wouldn’t run into this issue when trying to implement an exhausted limit to tackle other types of siege trolling. You also can’t troll this solution just by purchasing a commander tag.

All in all, this will make squads more functional, which will do more to help players to hop in the game and contribute to an environment with real strategic depth.

LumpOfCole.4701:

Torsailr.8456:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

The exhaustion idea has merit, however, a limit of three seems a bit small considering you may want to quickly build a number of defensive siege when you see a blob storming your keep. I’d wager the griefers won’t be dissuaded no matter what cap is put in place. They’d just wait it out.

One small tweak, perhaps, would be to not allow flame rams to be created inside a tower, camp or inner keep (SM & Garrison). At least force the griefers to use something that has a modicum of value.

I think a system that allows siege to be destroyed by the player base would be a better way to go. Some sort of approval where some number of players concur that a piece of siege should be destroyed in any given area. It would be a lot harder to get a group of griefers together to remove siege than it is for them to create it.

Allow a squad to salvage siege for a percentage of supplies used to build it? Share those supplies among the squad members that aren’t full?

A commander with 10+ people in his/her squad should be able to destroy siege. The number can change depending on factors like Outmanned Buff.

A siege troll can just get 10+ players from their home server and destroy every siege weapon there is.

Didn’t really read the other posts just now and don’t know if someone else suggested the same thing.

If the squad of a commander has X Players, the commander should have the right to destroy siege. Add /destroysiege that gets enabled for I dunno, let’s say 40-50 players in a squad to the commander commands? That way, people get encouraged to join squads and troll siege can be removed. Fixes atleast part of the problem, but is the easiest more or less effective fix one can produce quickly.

Why is it easy to implement?

You have the command system and you have the /squadinfo with tracks the amount people inside of the squad anyway, so you got that parameter. You also have a system to distinguish siege from other objects (siege duration buff/debuff or whatever you call it). So all the stones are already set. Just gotta bringem together.

Pseudocode:

New Command for Commander Rank players
Method destroysiege
Executed on chat “/destroysiege”
If Squad >40 && Target is a siege object {
destroy target }
Else “Target is either not siege or you do not have enough players in your squad”

Why would if work? Why can’t it really be abused?

If the Commander missuses his power, the people just leave the squad. Easy enough I think. If 40 ppl decide to troll WvW and give a random troll the right to destroy siegen, then it is basically a full guild that wants to troll WvW. They could do that anyways. If there are 40 trolls on the map, WvW wouldn’t work, no matter what you do. Just alone being 40 ppl short would be enough. It wouldn’t easily prevent the supply spending trolls, but atleast the siege placing ones.

- – -

Note: 40 is just an example. The correct number would have to be tested.

I agree completely with Deniara’s post. I don’t think Exhaustion is the right solution.

I’d say give a Siege Troll debuff when a Commander + 10? more players report the person for WvW Trolling.
First timers, 1 day debuff not allowing them to enter WvW and EoTM.
2nd timers, a week. 3rd timers, a month.

This system could be abused by random commanders so I suggest being able to unlock this option at a specific Wxp or Achievement where hardcore WvW Commanders would be able to unlock this, but not a casual/regular player. Also the option to report would be only seen by squad members. Basically acting like a party kick setup, only in squad setup.

So a Commander reports the person for WvW Trolling, then everyone in his squad get the option to kick him out of WvW, like party setup. I’m having full confident in hardcore WvW Commanders not to abuse this and kick people they don’t like, or random newbies so their guildies can join in which is also an issue in heated battles.

Nightshade.2570:

Instead of exhaustion, what if we looked at it from a different angle. Alot of times when dealing with a problem I look at things in reverse order to come up with a solution. I do not know how much this would be possible, as I know it has taken a long time to implement colors for Commander tags due to constraints.

However, what if siege was able to be cancelled for a certain amount of time after placement. Within the first five seconds or something. This would unfortunately cancel any supply that had been put into it making that as a lost amount but at the same time if it was tied to a commander tag, it would give commanders more control.

Perhaps commanders could get a build (f-yellow) button and a destroy (X value-red) button that pops up when they stand over/near seige.

Pro’s-Commander have more control over siege placement to stop a troll or, even to cancel the throwing of a mistaken ram on SM’s wall…

Con’s-Like above there are trolls with commander tags that could tag up just to cancel however that is an obvious action that people will see, the popping of a tag right next to you.

This would help alleviate the problem.

A siege troll can stalk players and cancel their builds before it is finished.

If its about dropping needless siege ie. ballistas in front of gate. There is a very simple fix. When anyone tosses down a blueprint, there should be an icon on top of it to show WHAT the piece of siege is superior siege can be colored gold, then you let people select that siege by clicking on that icon itself so they can build that specific one ignoring all other troll siege.

Ultimately, anyone who knows better will not build useless siege (ballistas) by a gate.

Edited: To prevent people from waste keep supply the best option with least amount of abuse is simply to have a player voting system where with enough votes or report, the player in question will be locked out of throwing down blueprints for 24h.

If a map contains 80 players at most, 90% of the time supply wasters will get called out in map chat, if half of the players on that map reports it he’ll get locked out. I can’t think of any other way where people can circumvate this because it’s a player base and regulated by the players themselves. This should have certain parameters such as, only players on the specific map can use this voting system and when player count on map is less than 10, that number should be 70% of all players must vote on it.

Forestgreen.7981:

If its about dropping needless siege ie. ballistas in front of gate. There is a very simple fix. When anyone tosses down a blueprint, there should be an icon on top of it to show WHAT the piece of siege is superior siege can be colored gold, then you let people select that siege by clicking on that icon itself so they can build that specific one ignoring all other troll siege.

Ultimately, anyone who knows better will not build useless siege (ballistas) by a gate.

Honestly, just changing the UI to say ‘Build Flame Ram’ or ‘Build Ballista’ instead of just ‘Build’ would go a long way to alleviate the issue.

> Spending 10 supp = 1 “Exhaustion” stack.

> 1 “Exhaustion” stack gets removed every 10 minutes if you dont spent supps

> When reaching 10 “Exhaustion” = cant build.

This way everyone is able to build around 2 x siege
People in a zerg will never reach this because you dont spend that much at once
When trolling you reach 10 very fast after that you have to wait 10 minutes to even spend 10 supps.. at that point it will take very long.

runeblade.7514:

Nightshade.2570:

Instead of exhaustion, what if we looked at it from a different angle. Alot of times when dealing with a problem I look at things in reverse order to come up with a solution. I do not know how much this would be possible, as I know it has taken a long time to implement colors for Commander tags due to constraints.

However, what if siege was able to be cancelled for a certain amount of time after placement. Within the first five seconds or something. This would unfortunately cancel any supply that had been put into it making that as a lost amount but at the same time if it was tied to a commander tag, it would give commanders more control.

Perhaps commanders could get a build (f-yellow) button and a destroy (X value-red) button that pops up when they stand over/near seige.

Pro’s-Commander have more control over siege placement to stop a troll or, even to cancel the throwing of a mistaken ram on SM’s wall…

Con’s-Like above there are trolls with commander tags that could tag up just to cancel however that is an obvious action that people will see, the popping of a tag right next to you.

This would help alleviate the problem.

A siege troll can stalk players and cancel their builds before it is finished.

Yep I get that, but the commander will know who it is and can port away leave that player/commander tag behind. Also hence the timer. The window for cancel would be short.

You can put exhaustion on the back end so that they get exhaustion if they cancel a siege!

Again theres no perfect fix there are only solutions to alleviate. My hope is this inspires a new direction of thinking about siege placement and abilities.

Perhaps this is not practical but a different / additional approach could be a point system for clearly incorrect behavior. When you take such a behavior, you are notified you are getting a point towards account suspension and a screenshot is automatically stored on the server. After 10 points (or some threshold), your ability to enter WvW with that account is suspended.

What kind of behavior is “clearly incorrect”? Perhaps building seige that is not in range of anything? So rams not near doors (yeah, you get a point to build a ram to finish a downed player…) Trebs or catapults that aren’t in range of anything (maybe there are legitimate anti-zerg uses of these, but probably they could be skipped).

Maybe people just resort to putting down ballistas and AC’s and they get around this. One potential benefit is that if the user is warned before they place the siege, it might avoid new players putting rams down by walls.

Put the character’s name on it.

If you see X’s Trebuchet Build Site when everyone’s putting down Flame Rams, you’ll know exactly who’s responsible.

Have a report function specifically for this issue, get X reports in Y amount of time, and you get a cooldown period where you can’t deploy siege. You can still build and operate siege normally. You just can’t deploy it.

This is a great topic!

I don’t have a good solution for the problem actually, but I will put together a few points that I think are important to consider when designing such a system.

1. The system should prevent or at least slow down people who only have the intent to use supply and build siege to be detrimental to the server. This explains itself.

2. The system should not be a major hindrance for players trying to play the game normally. For example: Sometimes you are the only one building defense at a gate, and such an exhaustion system would be very annoying for you. The system would also be very annoying for commanders, who always throw their own siege.

3. The system should not be abuseable by a few who want to be detrimental for their server. For example one could think of a system, where you can “report” players and after a certain number of reports the player loses the ability to place siege. This could be abused against commanders or just other players people don’t like.

4. The system should not be trivial to circumvent. For example a system could give exhaustion to players that place siege directly next to the supply storage. Players could just run away a bit away to still playce their siege.

So in the end we have to answer, How can we mechanically differ between a troll and someone who only wants to help their server? This is a pretty tough question to answer, especially as trolls will always find ways to circumvent or abuse new systems.

there must be hundreds of threads discussing this topic… I’ve started several myself in the last 2 years.

Exhaustion is a bad idea because most of the time the laying of defensive siege falls down to a handful of scouts while offensive siege is placed by commanders to stop everyone dropping rams at the gate.

The best suggestions from the threads can be summed as:

No timers on siege but instead siege can be destroyed by friendly players or captured by the enemy and used against you

The problem with this is that you run the risk of reaching the max limit on siege quickly if people don’t destroy their rams and catapults after taking places… but then if they don’t destroy their siege after taking somewhere then the enemy could capture that siege and use it themselves to take back the place. Another problem is that you could then get trolls destroying siege instead of just building it and it does not really stop the troll building siege either.

I can only think of two options… 1) a mechanism in which we can report trolls and cheats – that can be used on dead players and when you are dead… 2) a verification system whereby you have to be verified by the server to take supply, build siege, (destroy siege)… and this can be extended to commanding too.

We want to move away from option 1… so how do we do option 2.

Most servers I assume have an recognised alliance leader – SFR it is Kresh – those that don’t need to elect one. The alliance leader then approves who can act as admin on the server – give these people a green commander tag. Then the green commanders and alliance leader can approve people to build siege and take supply but also have the power to remove that privilege too. People would still be allowed to command using the other colour tags but only green commanders have the power to approve siege builders and supply takers and the green commanders will be the server’s recognised official commanders/admin. SO basically, you are handing out limited GM power to the servers to create their own administration and police themselves.

The problem would then be how do you elect and deselect the server leader.

Flipscore.4597:

Put the character’s name on it.

If you see X’s Trebuchet Build Site when everyone’s putting down Flame Rams, you’ll know exactly who’s responsible.

Have a report function specifically for this issue, get X reports in Y amount of time, and you get a cooldown period where you can’t deploy siege. You can still build and operate siege normally. You just can’t deploy it.

I like this idea

Flipscore.4597:

Put the character’s name on it.

If you see X’s Trebuchet Build Site when everyone’s putting down Flame Rams, you’ll know exactly who’s responsible.

Actually that would help alleviate quite a bit on our server only commander throws siege as well. So people wont ussually build stuff by random players unless they think its the commander who threw it.

I suggest adding a report reason related to the part of the EULA that prohibits this behavior. This same reason would apply to people who rig sPvP matches.

eldenbri.1059:

Perhaps this is not practical but a different / additional approach could be a point system for clearly incorrect behavior. When you take such a behavior, you are notified you are getting a point towards account suspension and a screenshot is automatically stored on the server. After 10 points (or some threshold), your ability to enter WvW with that account is suspended.

What kind of behavior is “clearly incorrect”? Perhaps building seige that is not in range of anything? So rams not near doors (yeah, you get a point to build a ram to finish a downed player…) Trebs or catapults that aren’t in range of anything (maybe there are legitimate anti-zerg uses of these, but probably they could be skipped).

Maybe people just resort to putting down ballistas and AC’s and they get around this. One potential benefit is that if the user is warned before they place the siege, it might avoid new players putting rams down by walls.

My problem with this:
-I used to experiment with “new” (ofc to me) siege spots with trebs/catas, running supply to build it alone.. f.e. before reset, garrison has 1k7 supply, i can build “some” trebs for my experiments without causing any problem, and without the intent of trolling, but some of it may end in a spot outside of “normal” range but f.e. good for destroying defensive sieges.
-Its a valid tactic to build a cata next to your trebs for the Bubble, so you can chain it, but ofc it is not in range.
-Flame Rams are useful for smaller, organized groups for iron-hide when bunkering up against a blob.. rarely used but always fun :P (Try it in Lordroom, fear+iron hide )

And our troll is building ballistas, as the cheapest siege to drain supply.

I have an idea or two to try to mitigate this sort of thing -

Step 1: Tag each siege dropped with who dropped it so anyone can see who deployed that build site or siege.

Step 2: Allow context right-click menu on siege “Report > Siege Trolling”.

Step 3: ??

Step 4: Banhammers.

I’m okay with exhaustion, less so with tying it into commander status. Just keep in mind smaller havoc squads use a bit of siege too, and take those into consideration when working out the numbers.

We had a particularly bad troll on our server. We’ve had dozens of people report him over the course of a year, perhaps more. (He seems to have left now, thankfully.) He was so bad, in fact, that he was a part of our new player training.

Dropping blueprints gets expensive. He had a bunch of cheaper tricks… constantly repair walls that are actively being attacked… pull siege from Garrison while upgrades are running to build all the cannons, mortars, oil, etc.

You can devise as many systems as you like, but IF YOU DO NOT ADD IT TO THE TERMS OF SERVICE AND POLICE THE WORST OFFENDERS, NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

Sorry for the caps, but I find them necessary.

There is no accurate reporting function for “attempting to ruin the game for the rest of us.” In fact, when I’d ask people in map to report him, our troll would threaten them saying their accounts would be banned for wrongful reporting if they did. Scare tactics.

Update the TOS. Create an option for Competitive Event Manipulation. Hand out bans for the worst offenders. The problem will solve itself once players realize you’re not afraid to ban people.

Heck, don’t even ban them from the game, just WvW. “Sorry, you have to sit out of the rest of this matchup now” will go a long way.

I think the exhaustion system when placing siege is probably the best way to go. Maybe 4 instead of 3. As for the people who say “you can place a lot of siege when defending a keep” that’s true. But presumably there’s a bunch of people in the keep, otherwise a: your siege won’t get built, and b: you’ll lose the keep anyways. If there’s other people, they can place siege too.

Sadly, all the ideas you got (quite nice to finally have those kinds of discussion in here and not being ignored by devs h24, 362days a year anymore) are either detrimental to the ones doing the sieging (it’s often the same handfull of people doing it all), and/or comanders, and will pose new problems.

Maybe you could brainstorm a bit of the ideas there, and use EotM as it was supposed to be at launch, a place to test new things for WvW too ?
We would see quite fast some of the limits of those ideas (do various iterations of differents ideas/models, and mix them a bit), it’ll give nice results anyway, and maybe help finding the “best” solution to it (there won’t be a foolproof solution to the siege trolling problem, without any drawbacks but we might find a solution that impair them as much as possible while not impacting the siegers/commanders too much).

I kind of like the exhaustion debuff idea, specially linked to the idea added of reduction of said exhaustion in relation to the people in your squad as commander.

It might be worth digging in that direction.

another thing to consider is if the enemy server is taking a place and you are deliberately spamming siege to drain supply before they take it… how do we determine between the troll and the genuine strategy?

Make regular blueprints account-bound while superior and guild siege can remain tradable. Siege trolling is so easy because ballista blueprints are 50 copper each. The average WvW’er is already swimming in enough badges of honor to keep themselves supplied with whatever regular siege they require. A majority of the time, superior siege is preferred anyway.

I like the idea of a community based lockout system. People on the map are given the ability to vote to siege lock a person. If enough people in the area vote to lock a troll, they are given the siege locked buff. The siege lock should last anywhere from a day to a week based on how many times it has happened to their account.

This buff will help people identify trolls in both normal WVW and EotM, and can give a character a bad image if made similar to the dishonored buff from sPvP. It will also act as a detterant by increasing the lockout period each time, to a possible perma-lock.

Even if enough people do band together to troll a commander, as long as they have no offenses they shouldent be locked for too long, and they can have someone else place their siege.

I hope this gives you all an idea
-Staiphos of NITE

Gob.3964:

Make regular blueprints account-bound while superior and guild siege can remain tradable. Siege trolling is so easy because ballista blueprints are 50 copper each. The average WvW’er is already swimming in enough badges of honor to keep themselves supplied with whatever regular siege they require. A majority of the time, superior siege is preferred anyway.

You’re just penalizing players….. and have no clue honestly.
This would break the economy for once. And on top of that most people actively sieging go through stacks of siege on a daily basis, and they aren’t earning 1/10th of the badges they would need for it.

On top of that you just killed a common practice that guild members send their excess siege/donate siege to their guild/commanders, so those can use/upgrade them if needed.

(we sure have a whole guild tab dedicated to donating normal bp and the mats to upgrade them in our guild, and we aren’t the only ones….).

I strongly disagree with any fully automatic system based on supply spent or siege placed, this hinders zerg commanders as well as small roaming groups that focus on getting towers for points.

From my experience, there are not many trolls, most people are very reasonable and mature. The trolls are however very sturdy. We have a common trollsetup on our server in EU that goes into the Eternal Battlegrounds, empties all 1700 supply of the keep, then going onto the homelands and do the same thing.

I suggest 2 things:

1) Under each siege buildsite and built up siege there is the name of the owner. This helps to identify the trolls as well as honouring the guys more that actually build meaningful siege, to defend a keep and tower. Two birds one stone here.

2) Give the people a option “flag for trolling”. If you right click any player of your team in WvW you have this option. If at least 15% (10 players required at least at all times) of the players on this map are flagging a player for this they get flagged as a “troll” resulting in:

Commander tag cant be put up
No siege can be placed
Maybe reduced event rewards

This all for X hours or minutes. You can shuffle the numbers around, shuffle the restrictions around to make it work, maybe even make a progression system, increasing the malus duration based on the # of flags. The trolls are few in numbers, but very impactfull, so i guess such a system cant get abused easily (its close to impossible to get 10 or more trolls on a single map) and the overall playerbase is really mature and wont flag people just for fun in my experience.

Excuse the mediocre english, i guess you can get my idea anyways.

Require 10 or so members of a guild to be present for a tower/keep to be claimed.

Only that guild can place siege in the tower

Make sure the time on a claim is reasonable so that the guild has to remain present on the map to maintain the claim to prevent issues.

Additional siege cannot be placed if the tower is not claimed, but already placed siege will remain.

I realize sometimes people change scouts and want that new scout to be able to place siege, well the players would then have the power to temporarily invite them to a guild if it’s necessary… it’s not perfect but I believe the main downsides would be things players could mitigate themselves. If a troll did get a guild large enough together to claim things he’d still have to beat legitimate guilds to the punch.

whoa, didnt expect this.

on required policing:
the best system ive seen so far is the league of legends tribunal, where the process of identifying bad behavior is completely automated and up to the community members. but even then, at the end of the day, the worst of the worst require a hooman to say “yeah, you get banned.” league is of course a much larger community than gw2, so perhaps with some giant automated machine you could simply have 1 GM. but the reason constant policing is required is because the machine cant discern intent from the vague whisperings reported by your metrics.

can an unintelligent being identify short, medium, and long term patterns? yeah of course. but if say, someone buys guards for a keep and then the keep is attacked.. and it happens 3 times in a row…. how does the machine tell the difference between a saboteur and a commander following the operational procedure of burning supplies on enemy territory he doesnt intend to hold?

so no, i think we do need constant policing, but i think the judgment calls can be reduced to a workload suitable for 1-2 people with the proper infrastructure.

some bad behavior characteristics:
mute to the server being sabotaged
alternate account from the same ip
certain types of siege thrown in certain places, most often without line of sight on any useful area
door trebs/catas facing walls

the best restriction i can think of right now is.. crowdsourcing upgrade approval for structures. have it work like the “exit fractal?” menu, where it pops up a little window on everyones screen and if say 1-2 other people say yes, the upgrade passes… and if 2 people say no (or if there are no responses) it cancels/stays in limbo.

exhaustion:
seems like it would be really kitten people who set up defenses… thats usually a solo procedure unfortunately. youll end up placing 20+ pieces of siege on a keep and building them all yourself (or maybe with 1 other person). so the question is… is that frequency threshold gonna actually be able to counteract trolls if only about 3 types of people throw siege that often? (commanders, defense setup, trolls) maybe, but at least test it in realistic situations first… im fairly certain i can place and build more than 1 piece of siege per minute in a keep, a single resupply run + build takes ~20 sec when a hut is close and a super ac takes 2 builds (=40 sec to build 1 piece).

not to mention the case where a single person knows how to place siege and has a group depending on him/her to coordinate defense efforts. under the pressure of an attack.

but dont get me wrong, im not shooting the idea down, i think it could work. and tbh, most of my play would avoid hitting the cap. but i do know how to build a defense, and defense is not something that needs more barriers placed in the way.

what if it was 5 stack max, 5 mins/stack? youd still have a rate of placement limitation, but you almost entirely avoid screwing with commanders, and it might lessen the burden on quick defense? but then, a troll can still siege cap a certain area i guess.

what if it was blueprint specific? so you can only place say.. 3 rams & ballis. but youre still able to place 3 acs, or 3 catas & trebs, or 3 golems. …its way more complicated like that, but could be worth looking at.

Filovirus.6258:

Gob.3964:

Make regular blueprints account-bound while superior and guild siege can remain tradable. Siege trolling is so easy because ballista blueprints are 50 copper each. The average WvW’er is already swimming in enough badges of honor to keep themselves supplied with whatever regular siege they require. A majority of the time, superior siege is preferred anyway.

You’re just penalizing players….. and have no clue honestly.
This would break the economy for once. And on top of that most people actively sieging go through stacks of siege on a daily basis, and they aren’t earning 1/10th of the badges they would need for it.

On top of that you just killed a common practice that guild members send their excess siege/donate siege to their guild/commanders, so those can use/upgrade them if needed.

(we sure have a whole guild tab dedicated to donating normal bp and the mats to upgrade them in our guild, and we aren’t the only ones….).

That’s why I said superior siege should remain tradable. Even if you are upgrading siege for your guild, the skill points are account-bound. I would think that someone generous enough to donate their skill points wouldn’t also mind donating their badges of honor.

So yes this would totally break the economy for badges of honor, making them actually worth something other than unsalvageable gear.

Seems to me that part of the problem stems from lack of commander authentication and authorization.

Many of the proposed solutions would deliver more control to commanders to mitigate or reverse siege trolling behaviour. However, unless there is a way to verify that a commander is trusted to make decisions for the benefit of a server, all this does is open the door for more forms of specialized trolling available to commanders specifically.

The problem, then, is either directly dependent on a solution to the commander problem, or is one and the same as the commander problem. Without a solution for commanders, fixes for siege trolls will be greatly limited in success.

Keep in mind that one goal for the design team will probably be to minimize the amount of direct intervention required by ArenaNet staff. If siege trolls and commander authentication can be internally governed by each world’s community, then I believe the fix would be successful in the long term, and would scale naturally with the game.