Guild Wars 2

The Maguuma Server was having this problem last night. A large group of people (I’m pretty sure it was all one Guild) were creating Siege Golem so they could purposely jump off cliffs to destroy them. If anyone asked them to stop they scream how we can’t tell then what to do because they had (according to them and the player himself) a Dev from the Adopt a Dev program in their group with them. And while I can’t prove that’s true, if it is it’s kind of pathetic.

Todo McGillicutty.8169:

The Maguuma Server was having this problem last night. A large group of people (I’m pretty sure it was all one Guild) were creating Siege Golem so they could purposely jump off cliffs to destroy them. If anyone asked them to stop they scream how we can’t tell then what to do because they had (according to them and the player himself) a Dev from the Adopt a Dev program in their group with them. And while I can’t prove that’s true, if it is it’s kind of pathetic.

Trolls always have a ready-to-go defense for why you can’t stop their trolling. Usually it’s “it’s allowed and if you report me, you’ll get banned instead for false reports.” That scares off a bunch of people from reporting them and makes it even less likely ArenaNet will do anything.

First off, thank you John and Anet for finally posting a thread on this issue. I haven’t had time to read all 6 pages and I’m on my way to work, so can’t say much, but I was excited to see this thread. This is a tough problem to combat through game mechanics as I am sure you see. I hope you do come up with a workable solution, however in the meantime, I hope you have banned the most infamous offenders while working towards a programmed deterrent. Anet knows who the most dedicated siege trolls are because they have been reported by many people during this season and last.

Please ban these guys.

Thanks again John. Your time and attention to this issue is greatly appreciated by the vast majority of the WvW community.

A community (MAP vote) for a reported troll. Typically there are legitimate commanders looking over all server maps. If someone is seen to be trolling siege they can report that player. Have the report display in map/team chat. Have an onscreen vote – like when kicking/booting from team – that easy.
Since ANET can have that cute little Anet image over the head of their “special” players in the world then they can create a big red bold T to display over the head of the player identified and voted on as a TROLL. Heck, if they can make sound cues for things like Might and Power, they can push a sound from that player like, “I am a Troll” over and over. Lock their ability to take/use supply across their account.
An organized and open community server will rally behind killing trolling

I like the exhaustion idea although it doesn’t seem like it would be good for “used” siege. We toss down catas/rams/(golems when planning impromptu rush) and exhaustion would be a hindrance on those siege. I would say place the exhaustion on the main troll siege “Ballista’s”. I have rarely seen any troll on any server use anything other than ballista’s. They are pretty much useless as a siege with the LoS and rate of fire that you can buy them for pennies. In the several seasons and time before that I’ve only seen it as a single drop counter siege(so exhaustion shouldn’t be a problem.)

I also like the Idea of commander tag required for siege placement without exhaustion but everyone and their dog has a tag now… maybe the next line of wvw point upgrade should be for commanders and X amount points placed will allow said commander to place siege without exhaustion when having a commander tag active). Heck you could even add other useful things for commander in that way since they typically have the points available for it and you can distinguish between veterans and non-vets to wvw.

Simple solution would be placing the name of the siege placer like if you click on the build site or siege, it says who placed it: “Placed by Insertnamehere”

Have the commanders with hats on currently, be able to remove the wrong siege and give back the supply that was needed to create it/build it, even if finished. If the supply used gets returned to a player with full supply (taking into account of wvw traits) then they go back to the main base’s stock. the siege goes back to the original owner’s inventory.

Coordinates better siege placement and may open up trials to new players on specific tactical siege placement.
No more wasting supply by the supply return option i mentioned above
No more misclicking wrong siege by having the option for the commander to remove unnecessary siege and return to original owner!
Saving Money by no misclicked siege

In a way Commander Siege Crusher has some of the abilities.

Sides obviously chosen and taken into account: FA commander cannot return siege of a SoS server back to them.

Now what about the trolls with commander tags?

Add a commander abuse report feature…or better yet, a grief report -_- which we could use in most of the game anyway, especially since the new dungeon change to where we can kick honest party leaders that soloed a dungeon legit without exploits just to lose his own spot!

Doubt anyone will read this, but…

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP SUGGESTION VOTE SYSTEMS.

Yes, that required all caps. Any system that automates punishment based on votes is the first thing that will be abused by trolls. I can guarantee you someone will write a script to issue votes against people on a list (that can be read off a text file), pass it around a group of trolls, and instantly give a small group of people the ability to cripple every commander and competent player in a server with a press of a button.

How about if

Solution #1

(a) A person’s name is attached to the siege they place. It also seems like the system already knows this, as siege you place remembers you (you will get priority on using it), so just make it public for everyone to see.

(b) A new report function. Right clicking on the siege gives you the ability to “Report” it. Players whose siege collects a lot of unique reports across their siege get a debuff like “Dishonored” in PvP. Debuffed players become unable to place siege to spend supply on siege. Numbers of course would need to be balanced.

This would allow the map to spread word quickly about siege trolls (“don’t build anything placed by XXXX”)

and would give a way for the server to manage themselves with siege trolls with a temporary disable without a GM needing to get involved.

A GM can, of course, become involved when the number of reports on an account gets absurdly high.

Solution #2

ADDITIONALLY to the above

You can no longer place siege in stupid positions. So if you want to place a siege right next to a gate, the only one that can be put there is any of the Rams.

This is just to stop people being stupid and putting siege where it doesn’t belong and getting everyone else to waste their supply, the prime offender being when someone puts a treb/ballista/catapult right by a gate when the zerg reaches it.

This does not stop them going off and building siege by themselves (and wasting supply that way) but it does stop them from trolling the rest of the zerg.

They could still place unnecessarily place extra rams – BUT – at least those would be usable in this scenario, and most players know well enough to begin building from left-to-right anyway (so the first few rams will always manage to be built).

Torsailr.8456:

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.

I agree this is really the only way to stop the trolls without impacting the game. The banhammer must not just fall on the troll account but also on all accounts logging in from the same IP address if this is to be effective.

There are trolls, and then there are spies.

Personally I see this impacting small teams of 2 or 3 that are taking towers while mostly impacting the top 6 servers. There is another underlying problem here that is being overlooked, maybe start there.

Besides the game design by nature allows this and some people are just taking advantage of it. Right or wrong, I think you have a different issue but that is just my opinion from a person who runs a small havoc team.

I absolutely love the idea of having the player name appear on the siege. Combine that with an addition to the reporting system to include siege griefing and you really have something. Most people will not act foolishly if there name is plastered all over the place.

I also like the idea of the game allowing me to interact with commander-thrown siege simply by hitting “build”, but if siege is thrown by a non-commander I think there should be a prompt asking me if I really want to build this piece of siege. And I know anybody could pop their tag, throw siege, and de-tag, so they would have to implement something into the game that only designated something as “commander siege” if they had their commander tag up for x number of seconds.

I would like to address this issue ‘Dropping siege on top of legitimate siege build sites’.

I am sure many of us here have seen dropped siege rams (in particular) placed legitimately, by commanders etc, only to be frustrated in being unable to actually construct them, without difficulty. This is because, in the main, the footprint of frames are too big. Put 5 rams on a gate and it becomes a real effort to build them. Click on a construction site is not 100% reliable to build it, ie its more like—edge forward 1 inch—to the left 2 inches—nearly there—got it—-ouch missed—back 3 inches—-where was i again?>>.

Further to my last post, I don’t think that putting restrictions on siege placement using an “exhaustion” system would work in the long run. It would most likely constantly be a hindrance, and only 1% of the time be legitimately useful.

There’s also something to be said for making this new system as simple as possible so it can be implemented quicker. I believe that what I mentioned in my above post is fairly simple and wouldn’t take too long to actually put into the game.

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.

This seems by far the easiest and best solution. Simply show the name of who threw the siege next to each item and allow you to report by clicking on that name. There would, of course, be punishments for people that troll-report.

- Easy to see if it is commander thrown siege or troll siege

- if one person goes around throwing a lot of troll siege their name will quickly get known and reported, probably a lot!

- No need for constant GM policing – just the normal monitoring of reports from players

- If “the system” records the siege each person has dropped it would be easy for admins to check for “strange behaviour”.

That alone would probably be enough to dissuade all but the most determined.

John Corpening.9847:

If we tweaked Exhaustion to this would it work? :

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 five stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege
4. If a player downs an enemy, destroys siege, breaks down a wall or gate their exhaustion is cleared
5. A commander’s exhaustion is reduced by 30 seconds for each member of his squad

Let’s have our troll use Ballista Blueprint as the cheapest option.

• 30 supply per print
• 1 Exhaustion per print
• 3 minutes per Exhaustion
• 5 Exhaustion per troll

There will be a burst of 150 supply consumed as quickly as the troll can move to build it.

Suppose that the troll moves at a rate of 5 seconds per 10 supply consumed. That is travel time between the build site and depot, including time to build. The troll uses Build Mastery WvW trait to spend 10 supply instantly, and Supply Mastery to gain swiftness.

The Ballista troll needs 75 seconds to spend 150 supplies, up to 5 stacks of Exhaustion. This will consume an entire basic tower or supply camp before the troll hits 5 Exhaustion. He has also hit the local cap for siege sites in his build area.

A wealthier troll makes the same play, but with Trebuchet.

Trebuchet troll spends 250 seconds to consume 500 supply per troll burst.

In all cases, because the Exhaustion is received in bursts of trolling, the stacks cooldown on the same intervals.

Ballista troll, needing only 75 seconds to build 5 sites, also waits only 1 minute 45 seconds to drop ballista #6. He also then begins dropping 1 Exhaustion every 15 seconds, while building his next troll burst.

Trebuchet troll has no wait time, because he spends more time moving between his build site and depot than he needs for the Exhaustion cooldowns.

In all cases, the troll can learn or plan his blueprint consumption intervals to mitigate his Exhaustion costs. He will learn this by doing it.

Stop thinking about report things. It won’t work, as Anet is looking for a system that would fix without the need of report.

BUT: having a link between the blue print and the one who dropped it would be usefull, if, for instance, blocking a player would make the blue print used by this player invisible. Most of trolls are getting blocked by “regular” players, mostly for their spam in /map, and when you attacking a gate and building something, it would solve the problem of “accidentaly” building a troll blue print.

Once built, the siege would become visible for all.

Give us one more option to report: “WvW trolling”. When 10+ players report the same player, don’t let him use/take supply nor drop/use siege for some time (24h or even more)

Spiky.8403:

Give us one more option to report: “WvW trolling”. When 10+ players report the same player, don’t let him use/take supply nor drop/use siege for some time (24h or even more)

Won’t work. Trolls will just get together in a group of 10 accounts. Report valid commanders. Now you commanders can’t place siege.

Denar.3950 solution 2, one problem with that, now you can build one Cat next to gate simple to get the shield so you can block siege disabler.

Easy. Code in an invisible circle (of radius 450 or so) in front of the gate of every structure. This invisible circle will represent an area where only flame rams can be deployed. If you try to throw anything other than a flame ram in this invisible circle, it won’t let your siege be thrown. Change the flame rams such that they can ONLY be thrown in the invisible circle and if you try to throw a flame ram, say, in an open field, it won’t let you throw it.

Radian.2478:

Easy. Code in an invisible circle (of radius 450 or so) in front of the gate of every structure. This invisible circle will represent an area where only flame rams can be deployed. If you try to throw anything other than a flame ram in this invisible circle, it won’t let your siege be thrown. Change the flame rams such that they can ONLY be thrown in the invisible circle and if you try to throw a flame ram, say, in an open field, it won’t let you throw it.

Except I’ve seen Flame Rams used on top of staircases for blockage vs enemy zergs sometimes . . .

There isn’t a simple solution to this problem.

It is not possible, even in principle, to create an automatic penalty system that would punish trolls to a sufficient degree without simultaneously causing unacceptable collateral damage to legitimate activities. We just don’t have the kind of artificial intelligence that would be needed to put the actions in the proper context.

Voting systems are inherently flawed and prone to abuse as well. A specific troll report option might help, assuming that (1) all siege and pending updates can be queried for the owner / initiating player and easily reported, and (2) these reports are processed in near real-time by a GM who reviews the actions and delivers appropriate sanctions.

My preferred suggestion is a bit different: give players new resource management tools. Specifically,

• the owner of a siege item can set its access permissions to everyone / my squad / my guild / my team. This prevents golem stealing and siege squatting.
• a member of a guild that has claimed a camp / tower / keep / castle can similarly set supply access permissions for the site, thus preventing unauthorized use of supply when necessary

I’m in favor of improving the build site interaction as others have suggested. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated though, just show something like “Build PlayerX’s Flame Ram” instead of just “Build.”

Following the analogy that this is WAR, a couple of suggestions:

-Saboteurs and fifth columns are a known threat in any war. In reality they are shot. I propose that we allow anyone to switch a tag on another player that changes them from green status to yellow. Then they can be killed. The attacker would also change status to allow other players to take down an assassin. Have your NPC’s aggro on yellow players with the ability to immobilize them. This opens up other mechanics that might be interesting. Have a bad commander? Tag him yellow and frag him. Players running from battle? Have your Rangers shoot em down.

-Allow players to drop off supply in dumps as well as pick up. This would allow some mitigation of the saboteur’s effect.

-Allow the destruction of unwanted seige. Again this helps to mitigate some of the damage. I would also add an area wide alarm if seige is being damaged so you can mobilize and prevent the unwanted destruction of seige.

tmakinen.1048:

• a member of a guild that has claimed a camp / tower / keep / castle can similarly set supply access permissions for the site, thus preventing unauthorized use of supply when necessary

What stops the troll in his one man guild from grabbing any convenient site that hasn’t yet been claimed, and denying the use of the supply? You’re basically handing them the exact result that they intend to achieve through siege trolling.

John Corpening.9847:

Great discussion so far! I came back from a couple of meetings and was blown away to see so many excellent ideas and constructive posts.

There were a number of suggestions around labelling dropped siege to allow players decide which siege to build. I like the idea of filtering dropped siege. Maybe you could have some of the following settings:

• Show my Commander’s siege
• Show my Squad’s siege
• Show my Guild’s siege
• Show my Party’s siege

If siege dropped doesn’t meet one of the settings you pick, you won’t get an interact for them.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions!
John

This is the simplest idea, creates the least havoc and only has a downside for the players who are new to WvW.

I think spending time voting/hunting/ and searching for players who actually may be new and just think its fun to throw siege around, is largely not the direction a community should take.

From a commanding perspective, Voting on disabling siege is to time consuming and allows your enemy more time to gather their forces to fight you off.

Not being able to build unwanted siege, is effective and alleviates the system without bottlenecking wvw by applying exhaustion which is really just applying, more timers and rules.

Daspang.8270:

I propose that we allow anyone to switch a tag on another player that changes them from green status to yellow.

If your intention is that they turn yellow to all (like neutral mobs/NPCs) then this would be maximum trolling the next time a commander asks his zerg to bomb AoE on him, or blast fire fields. Troll turns commander yellow, zerg nukes their own commander.

epic thread /thumbsup

- no I don’t want to pop my tag to deploy siege (I mostly do small scale roaming)
- put names under siege
- add a “dismantle” button that need three approvals

Just like with lockouts previously, you can have siege lockouts, which wouldn’t hamper the play of most legitimate players at all. If you haven’t been on a server for more than 1-2 weeks, you can’t lay siege.

If you are a legit player, you can just mail it to someone else in your group to drop.

Pandaman.4758:

Don’t forget destroying siege golems, despawning legitimate siege by spamming trash siege, and blocking keep upgrades by spamming trash siege. Preventing F-key interaction is only a part of the exploit.

I didn’t forget, please read the first sentence of my post where I stated there were two types of trolling. I only proposed a solution to problem 1. Problem 2 is more difficult but that doesn’t mean we can’t resolve Problem 1 while we’re still working on Problem 2.

BlackBeard.2873:

Just like with lockouts previously, you can have siege lockouts, which wouldn’t hamper the play of most legitimate players at all. If you haven’t been on a server for more than 1-2 weeks, you can’t lay siege.

If you are a legit player, you can just mail it to someone else in your group to drop.

I’m afraid that won’t work at all, the siege trolls are either secondary accounts made months ago to sabotage a specific server or they’re actual residents of the server who have been paid to sabotage – either way, they’ve been around for a lot longer that two weeks.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

I didn’t forget, please read the first sentence of my post where I stated there were two types of trolling. I only proposed a solution to problem 1. Problem 2 is more difficult but that doesn’t mean we can’t resolve Problem 1 while we’re still working on Problem 2.

Ah, sorry, completely missed that.

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

Have the commanders with hats on currently, be able to remove the wrong siege and give back the supply that was needed to create it/build it, even if finished. If the supply used gets returned to a player with full supply (taking into account of wvw traits) then they go back to the main base’s stock. the siege goes back to the original owner’s inventory.

Coordinates better siege placement and may open up trials to new players on specific tactical siege placement.
No more wasting supply by the supply return option i mentioned above
No more misclicking wrong siege by having the option for the commander to remove unnecessary siege and return to original owner!
Saving Money by no misclicked siege

In a way Commander Siege Crusher has some of the abilities.

Sides obviously chosen and taken into account: FA commander cannot return siege of a SoS server back to them.

Now what about the trolls with commander tags?

Add a commander abuse report feature…or better yet, a grief report -_- which we could use in most of the game anyway, especially since the new dungeon change to where we can kick honest party leaders that soloed a dungeon legit without exploits just to lose his own spot!

One thing to take into account, however, is whether this will make rams something like a disposable siege. For example, imagine taking on the SM castle, you build several rams to take down the outer gate, as soon as the gate is down, remove all the rams to get supply back to build more rams on inner gate.

Maybe if the ability to remove a siege was disabled once that siege has caused damage on anything. Also make it so that damage to AI mobs isn’t taken into account, or it would also allow a troll to build a siege where it would be useless yet still do damage to a deer or something like that to prevent it from being removed.

Some great comments on here, and I like John’s thinking already from the post he made a few pages back on initial ideas.

I’m not a big fan of exhaustion as I’m concerned about penalties for groups that roam without a commander, but I can understand the benefits. The 5 rules / constraints on exhaustion outlined by John could work.

I’ve read / scanned most of the thread, and there’s a few other ways that we could embellish on or consider to tackle the troll problem: (apologies if I’m duplicating)

- We can use WvW skill points in a siege line to improve siege allowances – doesn’t remove trolling, but forces some wvw investment by players using siege regularly.
- Granting a commander greater siege allowances per squad size is a good win
- Colour coding on siege to match the commander tag (as an example) would definitely help – the filtering option is great too if that could be achieved
- Look at Guild Unlocks / Influence items that increase siege allowances for members of a guild – those that wvw often will have this enabled and all members will benefit.

The above are around usability.

How do we remove the trolls from having an impact?

- Enable reporting on Siege for wvw trolling – increase / apply exhaustion to players that prevents further siege or supply being used
- It’s possible, I guess, that one guild may mass report a pug commander’s siege as they want to take over – allow endorsement votes to remove the exhaustion from players by other players. Restrict these to same server individuals to avoid cross server griefing.
- If enough siege placed by players (quantity of siege not volume of votes only, so that the player must have placed several siege items that have had many votes each) is reported then apply a tempban from wvw arenas for the player. Remove them from the environment and they won’t bother anyone. Maybe their own inconvenience will make them better team players. Obviously griefing of this system would need its own consequences, as does troll reporting today. I don’t know how much this is a problem for GM’s in game.

Any siege reports must be restricted to own server items. Obvious requirement, but let’s not miss it!

Just some ideas of mine:

1) Siege Weapons in the near of towers and keeps should have preset spots for them to be placed which prevent that any more sieges can be used as long those build up sieges in those preset spots aren’t either destroyed first or run out of their spawn time.

Example: Around Tower X are 5 preset Siege Weapon Slots into which you can build Sieges of preset types.
2 Slots at the Gate for Rams, 2 slots for catapults and 1 set for either an arrow cart or ballista.

Advantage of this:
- It prevents Siege Trolling, because in these slots can be build only those types of sieges, for what those sieges are really meant for. No catapults anymore at the front of gates for example.
- And it totally prevents Trolls from exceedign the Siege Weapon Cap by spamming tons of sieges somehwere, when Siege Weapons can be placed only into preset slot locations.
- This would also finally prevent putting Siege Weapons into the most craziests and unlogically places making it harder than intended to take those locations, like putting huge trebuchets on spots that nearly have no space for them, putting catapults/trebuchets on rooftops of towers ect., what players do only, because thats the only way to protect them from the massive AoE spam of enemies that can quickly destroy siege weapons in a matter of seconds of the zerg spammign attacks is just big enough, what is the reason, why WvW needs a complete redesign in its defense gameplay. Bigger Siege Weapons should receive only damage from enemy siege weapons, not from players. Only Arrow Carts and Ballistas should be destroyabl from player attacks, but not trebuchets and catapults.

2) Before you do anythign against Siege Trolls, I hope, you do first finally something against all those tons of WvW Cheaters that exploit the game due to the help of tons of HACKS. Thats that far much bigger evil in WvW, which ruined the whole game experience for really MANY players to the point, that alot of peopel stopped playig WvW completely due to stuff like:

- Invisibility Hacks
- Wall Halls
- Fly Hacks/ Anti Gravity Hacks
- Stat Boost Hacks
- Instant Rezz Hacks (makign it impossible to stomp because of peopel standign up out of downed state, as if nothing happened and even if the stomp animation goes through, the player beign not dead at all …)

Fix all this stuff first please, and whatever hacks I may have not listed up here now and I know there are surely more…
That would be a great favor for your community absolutely which would revitalize WvW surely for alot of players, when all this cheap cheating would find finally an end, because as long as these things work in WvW, the whole game mode can’t be taken serious and it just gives the game a bad reputation, if such things don’t get fixed ASAP but instead get ignored like for several months to years… like all of this wouldn’t just exist.
—-

Besides of these 2 points i find the idea of Exhaustion good, but I’d rename it into “Material Fatigue” and make out of siege weapons just like been suggested here a Commander Only feature, that only commanders can start siege weapon builds for the cost, that commanders self can’t carry no supply anymore so that they always have to let their squads let build up their sieges without beign able to put self supply into their sieges, so that commanders always need the help of other players to build up their sieges.

Exhaustion is a term, that Id rather like to see coming back as some kind of condition or gameplay mechanic to prevent knock down spamming as a direly needed balancign change. knockdown play in WvW is just totally out of control unbalanced! But thats a different topic/story.

Pandaman.4758:

Doubt anyone will read this, but…

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP SUGGESTION VOTE SYSTEMS.

Yes, that required all caps. Any system that automates punishment based on votes is the first thing that will be abused by trolls. I can guarantee you someone will write a script to issue votes against people on a list (that can be read off a text file), pass it around a group of trolls, and instantly give a small group of people the ability to cripple every commander and competent player in a server with a press of a button.

Yes I agree. Having any type of voting system will lead to more trolls and griefers. Just look at the party kick vote system in dungeons. It never ends well. I know there are already systems in place that monitor how much supply is spent (achievements) and how many siege is built (achievements). I still think that having an background automated system that checks how much supply/siege was built by a player within X amount of time when said player/troll recieves Y amount of reports, will automatically issue a temp ban (Similar to the dishonored debuff in PvP) and flag that account. GMs can then examine the account, and take action as needed.

This allows trolls to be dealt with, and removed from play for 2 days, which gives GMs some time to examine the account. If a troll/griefer is indeed found a GM can issue a suspension or ban as needed, or remove debuff and allow to resume play.

No, voting by a bunch of trolls or players who don’t like a certain commander (we have one on our server that no one really cares for, and they’ll most certainly be voted off at the very first opportunity, they aren’t a troll they are just a terrible person) or voting on kicking someone they don’t like for whatever reason. A voting system will cause more damage then any siege troll can ever do.

Also having a commander siege type system, where only those in a squad, or a commander, can throw/build siege only hampers and limits those not in a squad or not a commander. I generally run with a small havoc group, and sometimes we will take a tower or keep. In order to do so, we would need to have a commander, or party up into a squad just to take the objective. But whats stopping a troll from tagging up and continue on doing what they do? Nothing really.

The wrong type of siege can be handled pretty simply. New superior siege trumps old regular siege. If the siege cap is hit, old regular siege is immediately decayed for new superior siege.

The second problem is draining the supply from keep/tower by one player. I would institute and “exhaustion” mechanic on removing supply. Limit the amount a single player can extract over time. I would also couple this with a reporting mechanism that immediately exhausts a player if X number of players report them. This does have problems but is better than what we have today.

pdavis.8031:

Also having a commander siege type system, where only those in a squad, or a commander, can throw/build siege only hampers and limits those not in a squad or not a commander. I generally run with a small havoc group, and sometimes we will take a tower or keep. In order to do so, we would need to have a commander, or party up into a squad just to take the objective. But whats stopping a troll from tagging up and continue on doing what they do? Nothing really.

I’ve recommended such a system that would have zero impact on havoc groups and other people who would want to deploy siege without tagging up. Basically it would be an opt in for anyone following a commander to prevent them from spending supply on build sites placed by players other than the commander. It would be automatic when a player joined a squad. This is entirely in line with the concept of the squad as a way for players to pool their supply and hand its management over to one individual.

This sort of system would mean you wouldn’t need restrictions on what could be placed near a gate, it would also be effective against trolling build sites in other scenarios, such as when a commander needs to place a treb or cata or AC.

It wouldn’t solve siege cap or supply drain abuses, but frankly that’s a different issue. There’s a lot of casual trolling and sometimes inadvertent sabotage by inexperienced players, as well as aggressive and frustrating griefing, that could be avoided by implementing this.

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.

This guy nailed it. U should focus on supplies spent, not sieges dropped. This way, commanders can still drop all the sieges and the siege trolls can’t…well…troll?

I think it’s the best way to implement this.

yanniell.1236:

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.

This guy nailed it. U should focus on supplies spent, not sieges dropped. This way, commanders can still drop all the sieges and the siege trolls can’t…well…troll?

I think it’s the best way to implement this.

NO , Just no.

Most people actually defending or sieging your keeps are not commanders and generally few in numbers on servers lower than t1. Its common for 2 or 3 people to siege a map during off hours. So it makes no sense to limit supply spent. If there is an ocx ktrain coming to a tower, I prefer to be able to build siege to slow them down.

John Corpening.9847:

There were a number of suggestions around labelling dropped siege to allow players decide which siege to build. I like the idea of filtering dropped siege. Maybe you could have some of the following settings:

• Show my Commander’s siege
• Show my Squad’s siege
• Show my Guild’s siege
• Show my Party’s siege

If siege dropped doesn’t meet one of the settings you pick, you won’t get an interact for them.

This idea sounds like it has potential, but I think a simple option of “Interact with trusted siege only” would be simpler and more convenient. This would also include information to tell the player that siege is “trusted” if it is created by someone on your friends list, someone in your guild, one of your party members, or the commander of your squad if you are in one. Burning oil, cannons, mortars, and siege golems would always be trusted, but not siege golem build sites if build sites are included in this restriction.

John Corpening.9847:

The exhaustion idea that I kicked out there has had some mixed responses. There were some amazingly good ideas to make it work a whole lot better. For example, I really liked the suggestions that the cool down time is reduced for each member of your squad. I am really concerned though about the affects that you guys brought up on small havok groups and defenders. There were some suggestions that I think would make it work. For example, a couple of suggestions were along the lines of if you are actively playing it will clear your exhaustion. So if you down an enemy, break down a gate, destroy enemy siege etc. your exhaustion would be cleared.

If we tweaked Exhaustion to this would it work? :

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 five stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege
4. If a player downs an enemy, destroys siege, breaks down a wall or gate their exhaustion is cleared
5. A commander’s exhaustion is reduced by 30 seconds for each member of his squad

We aren’t tied to this idea at all. I’m just collecting and shaping some of your suggestions on this idea in large part because a lot of people seemed to like it. I’m wondering if there is a version that would work for everyone.

I do not like this idea at all. There are often situations where I have to place a lot of siege in a short time during defensive situations. Times when I have to throw down 10 arrow cart blueprints in three minutes to defend a keep aren’t common, but they do happen. I also occasionally set up 4-5 balistas and a few arrow carts to help defend supply camps near our spawn points when holding them is critical.

John Corpening.9847:

Some sort of community policing also came up a bunch in this discussion. I think there were some great and promising ideas there. But, generally the concern with that comes down to a few things. How many people would be needed to get a person banned? What if not that many people are on? At what lower number will we have to start worrying about groups kicking members of another group because of petty arguments?

Finally, regarding swinging ye olde banhammer, that’s an option but if we can make some reasonable adjustments that greatly reduces the need for that option it will really be the better way to go. I would very much like to steer clear of falling back to that option in this discussion.

I don’t think players being able to ban other players is ever a good idea. The existing report system would work well for this if a clear “anti-competitive PvP behavior” (don’t actually call it that) option existed for players who try to sabotage their own team in WvW or PvP.

storiessave.3807:

Okay, let’s imagine for a second that you find what you think is some balanced cure-all to fix siege trolling.

Say you implement something that makes sieging structures or attacking structures a major hassle for the rest of us, yet supposedly will keep trolls from trolling. How do you make that completely troll-proof? These specific players are hell-bent on crippling the server they’re on as much as possible. If they can’t do what they are now, they’ll find another way to give us hell.

Why not ban the individuals? Someone brought up a good point – there are probably only a handful of siege trolls across all servers. Eliminate them, you eliminate the problem without making WvW a hassle for the rest of us.

Why is that not possible? You guys go through probably dozens or maybe even hundreds of tickets per week on people hacking or exploiting or griefing in all modes of the game – why is it so out of the realm of possibility that you could look into the very few players that siege troll? It’s not exactly a common occurrence. It’s literally just a few players.

TC has had another siege troll or two in the past, but last season and this season, there has been only one, and he is well-known. He keeps doing what he does because you guys take no action, yet here you are admitting that siege trolling is an issue. What gives?

This!!
Make it reportable and ban them!
Maybe for a week when it is the first time. But if they keep going on and on ban them forever. Sure, they can always buy a new account if it is rly worth for them. But that is probably not against your intrests as a company. If they keep trolling with new accounts, keep on baning those accounts!

I personally do not want something too complicated. The current system allows anyone to help and 99.999% of people who I encounter in game are good and I like my fellow players most of the time, it’s why I like GW2. I am unsure why a GM needs to be so urgently avoided since every server knows who their devoted trolls are. I can immediately name both of Tarnished Coast’s.

This is also to mention there are two kinds of siege troll. We have the professional ones that everyone knows on the server and then the “one offs” who arrive with some sort of grudge or because they are drunk/high and do stuff. The latter people typically flame out after an hour or so and to be honest, I really do not care, I don’t think they impact the match, plus they have the bonus of being reportable for trashy language, harassment etc in many cases, so it’s easy to report them… they have a category! The former though are professionals and say very little and have clean language.

As for the guy that said matches are not effected? I went to Mos.Millenium and compared our last Sunday to all the other Sundays where our esteemed troll was not active. It was a 10 or possibly 12 hour period of devoted supply draining and the effect is clear in our PPT. We have been on the verge of taking 2nd place for a large part of this week and I believe if it hadn’t been for the troll we’d be putting up an even better contention for it… as it is now we’re probably not going to recover from 3rd. There’s also the impact to morale. A lot of people don’t want to play with this kind of thing going on (on Sunday we were outnumber buffed on the map for many hours, which is not normal), so even when the troll left, it wasn’t until 3-4 hours later that we pulled our kitten together and got things moving again.

It has still been a fun match and the core of our server will just keep on keeping on but I’d just like to see these guys banned. I’ll never claim that we would have won or something if it wasn’t for these jerks BUT it sure impacted our fun and that’s what games are for.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

This idea sounds like it has potential, but I think a simple option of “Interact with trusted siege only” would be simpler and more convenient. This would also include information to tell the player that siege is “trusted” if it is created by someone on your friends list, someone in your guild, one of your party members, or the commander of your squad if you are in one. Burning oil, cannons, mortars, and siege golems would always be trusted, but not siege golem build sites if build sites are included in this restriction.

I like those additions to the idea I suggested of making squad members able to put supply only on their commander’s build sites: add friends, party members and guild members to that list. That would definitely make it much less restrictive while accomplishing the same objectives.

With regards to siege cap abuses, I think changing siege timeout and the actual siege cap, perhaps making some interaction between the two, could go a lot further than any sort of system for automatic reporting or dismantling.

Wasting supply is probably the hardest to deal with since players can claim they are trying to be constructive (wasting supply on a damaged wall), and they can consume supply very easily with poorly-timed upgrades.

The exhaustion system looks decent on paper, and there really hasn’t been any other viable solutions. If Arenanet does decide on something please test the system first. However my personal opinion on the exhaustion system is that trolls will still find a way to work around it and cause grief. There really is no other better system then a policing force. Maybe a system with dedicated players that Arenanet and servers have appointed that can handle these situations. Say 1 to 5 per server and each of the 3 servers has to agree upon the player being dealt with. Other then that Arenanet needs to spend alittle money and man up and take care of issues with their game.

lioka qiao.8734:

• 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).

best idea ive seen so far. Sure this again can lead to further trolling by dismantling siege then building new ones and as thus continuously drain supply. Still need LOTS of players to do this…. catching 10 trolls is easier then 1….

So still, love this idea.

Nightshade.2570:

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.

Being obvious does not solve the issue. We have trolls who gladly shout in map chat what they are doing. What is frustrating is having no recourse. They can stand right in front of you and toss siege or jump a golem off a cliff and you can’t stop them.

I could accept the idea of an automated reporting system. If enough people report a person they gain a “dishonor” debuff for 60 minutes. During this time they cannot spend supply and cannot pilot a golem. They will still be able to drop siege. That way trolls cannot dishonor commanders into uselessness; commanders normally rely on the zerg to build anyway. Furthermore, if you report more than 3 times in 60 minutes you gain the dishonor debuff yourself. That will help limit people to report only the trolls. This system would protect the mechanics of the game without being overly punitive.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

T

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 wouldn’t want to see this. My ram-master guardian can toss a flame ram down and defend a camp. I just trait up my burning and cook anything that comes at me.

To me I would prefer to keep the siege trolls over removing functionality from the game. Restricting 99.95% of the player bases activity because of the actions of .05% seems out of line. Any solution would need to ensure that individuals and people other than commanders can still work with siege. A good number of threads call for restricting zerging but a lot of these are limiting smaller group play. An untagged havoc squad should be able to deploy siege, so should a single player building up defenses in a keep. A lot of WvWers don’t run in squads, nor should they have to.

To me I would prefer the resources be put towards tracking in game metrics. Record siege placement by account and keep a sampling over a period of time. Create an in game mechanism for players to report these trolls. Give the GMs the ability to flag an account as suspicious which can tell the application to record a larger pool of data on them. After some defined number of reports have someone familiar with WvW review the placements and determine if the reports are valid. If found valid, take action, if invalid apply the same rules that are applied to people abusing the reporting system today.

I have seen people claim that someone is a siege troll in map chat just to find out that the person was legitimately deploying siege in spots they thought would help and/or with regular siege because that was the best siege they had. That didn’t make them a troll though.

Any system in place would have to be able to distinguish this activity from someone creating a row of rams down the center of a map. Even then as stated above once the pattern is known, a troll will just change their behavior. Today its rams, tomorrow might be balista’s that have blocked lines of sight. Without tools to review prior activity you can not tell if this just someone looking for inventive siege placement to someone actually trolling.

Thanks for your time.

I spend a lot of time playing wvw at times of the day when there are only a handful of people on our home borderland and no commanders to be seen, with maybe 1 map roaming group going between the other borderlands and EB that we can call in in an emergency, but the opposing servers have several large groups that can pop into the map suddenly and rush our structures without warning, so we need plenty of siege there for the 3 or 4 of us that are left on the map to defend as best as possible until
help arrives.

Very often I have found after joining the map that there’s little to no defensive siege left in our structures, and I’ll end up having to go and build lots of siege in at least garri, ne and nw towers as quickly as possible (although I try to match the amount of siege I build to available supplies and number of yaks coming in so as not to use up too much supply – but if supply is available I can build a lot of siege in a short amount of time). Also with so few people on the map I often find I’m the only one running supplies to build the siege.

A lot of the restrictions suggested in this thread would really impact the ability for me, and others like me, to build legitimate siege that is needed for defense. Putting restrictions on how much siege someone can build or supply they can use is really bad for people that are trying their best to help their server at some of the ‘worst’ times of day. It’s not just commanders that put down siege, and there’s not always a big group of people on the map to be able to share the load.

There are a lot of dedicated sentries that spend a lot of their own time and money on singlehandedly siegeing up towers and keeps and I feel that any restrictions would negatively impact some of the gameplay for them.

I think that what we need is a proper report category for siege trolls. At the moment I would think a lot of people are put off reporting them under a ‘wrong’ category in case they get some kind of punishment for mis-reporting someone. We kinda need GM intervention to take action against siege trolls and show that behaviour is really not acceptable and that there are repercussions for their actions.

There really are only a handful of bad siege trolls in the game, and they’re mostly not at it every day, so I wouldn’t forsee it taking up a horrendous amount of resources to police them, but when 1 person can disrupt the play of everyone else trying to have a fun time for hours and hours on end, something has to be done – they need penalties applied to them, but we don’t need restrictions applied to our gameplay that might ultimately penalise legitimate players.

tl;dr – restrictions on legitimate play and players is bad, mmkay