Guild Wars 2

I know it will look “weird” and “out of place” but it’s really great to FINALLY have some dev attention, on a subject that was pinpointed as a problem for quite long (even if it doesn’t affect all servers the same), with devs starting the discussion, and following it afterwards, and people discussing it.

It’s been direly needed for nearly 2 years.

Let’s hope the “Adopt-a-Dev” program spawns more threads of this kind and renew the interest of devs into WvW.

What’s important to remember here is that ANY system can be exploited by both legit players and griefers alike.

Voting sounds good in theory, but what happens if it’s not just one griefer? What if it’s a bunch of people who think it’s real funny to constantly harass-vote siege? If I’ve learned anything about online multiplayer, just having someone constantly voting against you for the sake of being a jerk can get distracting and spoil your gameplay mood.

You also have to remember that there are always plenty of people who don’t think about it and just go along with it, assuming that good intentions are at hand. Or in some cases some people are so pessimistic they always vote against “to be sure”. So in some instances one griefer could potentially cause people to vote against legit siege who are otherwise too focused to pay attention to details.

At its core, the system at least sounds like -something-. But the very fact that players will have to focus away from the gameplay and focus on trying to thwart trolls means its only partially effective.

Filovirus.6258:

With the wording on the op’s message i’m pretty sure that’s what they don’t want.

To read between the lines, the op means :
“how to make things better for WvW players against siege trolls, without hindering normal play (define it first), without GMs/human intervention, with minimal dev/test time so it’s doable, because WvW is still the 1996567th Wheel of GW2 but since we started playing it this week we started seeing the gigantic problems/bugs/misshaps that are plaguing it and we want to at least try to correct them”.

I’m fairly certain they don’t want to do that. But I’m convinced, like Lord Kuru, any system will be surmounted by the truly dedicated trollers at best . . . or at worst, used as tools to reinvent the trolling.

Especially if we let in things with voting by players.

From reading a lot of the suggestions, has anyone thought of the delays these would cause in the course building/destroying seige?

shogei.8015:

Then all the troll needs to do is buy a commander tag. They can then go into your carefully sieged garrison and despawn everything, wasting the blueprints used to build them.

An active commander tag will attract people to come to his place. The troll won’t be alone anymore, and with a good report/ban system it could work. And if its a low level, he has to spent 300g for doing this, now. Anyway, the trolls will always find new ways to hurt a server.

I was about to toss out the exhaustion idea altogether because of the legitimate concerns of small groups that a good number of you have brought up but this post gave me another perspective on it. I’m going to merge some of the ideas you guys have put forth into a new iteration on the design you and I have been working out.

Here is the new proposal based on your ideas:
Siege Dismantling

You DO NOT get exhaustion from placing siege
If you own a piece of siege:
There is a skill on the skill bar called “Dismantle” that will drop the timer down to one minute
If you do not own a piece of siege:
There is a skill on the skill bar called “Vote Dismantle”
If a piece of siege gets 5 votes:
The timer on the siege drops to 5 minutes
The player who placed the siege gets a stack of exhaustion
In this proposal this is the only way to get exhaustion
When a siege timer is reduced to 0 it is dismantled
All siege that is dismantled drops 25% of the supply it took to construct

…

I could live with that, maybe with a small correction to a time system which is based on the actual wvw server population and time frame. If there are more people (enemies excluded) on the map then it needs more votes in a shorter timeframe.

I thinks it is mainly a tier 1 -2 (maybe 3 too) problem with their 24/7 fights, so any exhausted system will hurt lower tiers with their defenders during their offhours.

John Corpening.9847:

Let’s talk about Siege Trolls and what we can do about them. The problems that have been brought up are:

• Creating Siege to hit the siege cap
• Creating the wrong type of siege to hit area siege caps
• Spending supply on needless siege to drain supply depots
• Dropping siege on top of legitimate siege build sites

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?

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

We are just brainstorming here so I’d love to hear alternative suggestion or whether or not this would work for you.

I know there are other threads on this but I want to start with a clean discussion and focus on how we can realistically address this issue. Let’s keep this constructive and focused.

Thanks,
John

First off I’d really love to have account names tagged onto the siege just like Guild siege has it’s guild tag, this MIGHT help cause the siege is no longer anonymous.
try this first and see if it helps…then try something else with it.

Second PLEASE GET RID OF TOWER/KEEP upgrades, this is a great troll move to make sure the supply stays down or disappears real quick (and shortly before a random zerg just happens to lay a full assault)

Raise guard level and Fortify are pretty worthless, but great for trolls to use.

For each post giving a way to self police someone else has come a long and posted how easy it would be to abuse it. WvW is competitive and a work around would be found, as much as I enjoy wvw the player base can not be put in a position to troll each other.

As someone posted earlier about walking Golems off the ledge, Ive seen players bored that have built a golem, their own golem and gone for a walk, this isnt a troll but will be treated like one but then Ive seen 1 player take all golems in a keep one by one and jump off side of buildings, we can not police ourselves without there being some kind of abuse since for every good intention there will be someone with a bad one.

Atm the siege troll knows that we cannot do anything, but if he was given starting with a 3hour time out and extending the time, a flagged account should not able to enter wvw during tournaments, he gave up his right of fair play once he has been giving a certain number of timeouts, but this really can only be policed by unbiased.

Someone suggested a GW jail for a set amount of time, you think the guilds wouldnt have a field day with that even with their own members, you died? jail you go!

Zepher.7803:

First off I’d really love to have account names tagged onto the siege just like Guild siege has it’s guild tag, this MIGHT help cause the siege is no longer anonymous.
try this first and see if it helps…then try something else with it.

How is this going to do anything? Everyone already knows their local siege troller’s name. They work with impunity and don’t care if you know who they are.

Didn’t read all comments here but how about this:
There is a new Report Option that reports you for siegetrolling: If more than x People Report you for siegetrolling you have a 24 hour exhaust buff on you wich doesn’t allow you to spend supplies, build further siege or place blueprints. The best Parameters Need to be evolved.

Possible abuse: If there is a really big trollguild that reports 1 commander. This is somthing that might can be adressed that if the same x People Report more than 2-3 People within a day the reports are invalid. ( normally there aren’t that many trolls on a Server, on top of that the Population changes so there aren’t always the same People)

anyways hope you find a good solution:)

Lord Kuru.3685:

• Doesn’t stop trolls from refreshing their own siege so they don’t despawn in the first place.

I’m not sure what the problem is, because the first suggestion wasn’t about regulating which sieges can stay and which go, it’s about how to fix the exploit of using the siege cap to destroy supply.

• Doesn’t stop the real problem of supply draining: buying merchants right before/during an attack.

I forgot about that one, I’ll think about what to suggest for that particular method of draining supply.

• I come to your BL and take all three southern camps. I build balli with the camp’s supply in the back corner of each camp. I leave to fight in EB. I come back right before the balli expire with a small zerg and take those same camps back. Those balli expire and I have 200 supply in each camp that I create omegas with. (Yes, alternatively, I could create half my golem army now and come back later to create the other half for the same effect. Except that golems will be trolled away, see below.)

Oh no, I didn’t mean the siege will just dump the supply in any supply depot, obviously it would have to be a friendly one and excess supply being held should be purged when a depot is flipped.

Imagine a troll dropping siege in the right places, and then despawning them himself by dropping more siege right before an attack. It’d be hilarious; for the troll.

If we have ownership tags in place we’ll be able to identify which siege are liable to being troll-despawned and build others on top of them instead. Now I recognize a flaw would be the troll somehow building all the siege engines before the rest of the server does, thus blocking any one person from replacing the troll sieges; I don’t have an immediate solution to that problem, so let me get back to you on that.

• We frequently leave golems at spawn in enemy BLs when we leave the BL, only to come back later to use them in an attack. What if the troll kills the golems when we’re gone and simply takes the camps back that we hold, where presumably all the supply has been refunded (if we even hold any camps)?

Yeah, I should have clarified that supply only goes back to the nearest friendly depot in range.

• Plus, it takes quite a bit of gold, effort, and most importantly, time, to build even a small golem army. None of that is refunded. The troll is still effective.
• Troll walks golem to nearest tower or even sentry and parks it for it to be destroyed by NPCs or real players.
• Troll dumps golem in the water in a less-traveled corner. They eventually despawn.

True, there’s still going to be losses, but as a whole they won’t be as effective as they are now. As for the other ways of destroying golems, it’ll be tough to figure out a solution to that, but at the very least it will be more time consuming for the troll to do as well, which in itself limits their effectiveness somewhat.

Troll drops the siege in the first place. But all backwards. (You don’t even need trolls for this, 1/2 of all players drop siege backwards already.)

We’ll have to rely on ownership tags again for the former, as for the latter… let the person who placed the siege set default direction? There’s only so much that can be done since this problem is a purely behavioral one and not a mechanics exploit.

I still think the oversieging is the trollest thing and greatest funkiller mechanism.
15 sieges in a little tower is common. Sieging a t3 keep for hours is just not fun. I dont say delete sieges from the game but now the sieges are about siege weapon-anti siege-siege disablers. No real fights. The only way to capture a sieged objective if you avoid the fight and ninja the objective (0 fun)

Firstly, thanks for responding to this problem is such a positive manner.

I really think that the problem is being blown out of proportion. Not in the effects that siege trolling can have on a server but by the numbers of people actually involved. On my server we have 2 identified siege trolls who operate at different times of the day. Thats it. If every server had the same amount thats what 60 people?

Do we really need a new, comlicated system brought into place to deal with these 60 people (across all servers)? Any changes bring with them the risk of creating new (maybe even worse) situations, or new unseen ways to troll.

What really needs to be sorted out is the reporting system. I can understand that the present system is time consuming for the GM’s involved. What needs to be done is for you to specify what exaclty you feel siege trolling is and set up a means for the wvw community to be able to report these people to you in a way that simplfies the processus.

You say you do not want the “banhammer” to fall. Why? Make it very clear, set up the rules, give people the correct tools to report (this could be via a video or screenshots) and then deal with them by simply banning them from wvw. Its your responsibilty to set this up so that your game can be played by us in the way you want.

There is no need to create a brand new system to deal with a very small minority of people who disturb the game for the vaste majority. Any new system would affect the whole player base, this is not needed.

John Corpening.9847:

• Commanders who actually have people following them can bypass the bulk of the penalty and should easily remove the rest through normal play

John Corpening.9847:

It’s also led to a bunch of spin off ideas that I think stand on their own and are great so I’m hoping to hit jump until the mystery box is out of coins

John, the /squad system is terrible. Improving it should have been part of the work considered while RainbowCom was in the pipe.

You just gave yourself another opportunity to fix it.

When a commander is nearby, there should be a UI indicator that will show people that the squad function exists, and also give them one (at most, two) mouse left-click’s access to joining that squad.

Make squads a more significant and used part of the game, while you add features to it.

I really believe the easiest solution is using a system thats already in place. Trolls, as someone mentioned, usually travel to a server specifically to troll..using lower level, non-dedicated alts. Therefore, just use the achievement system and ranking in a way that limits WHO can place siege at all.....for instance, a new achievement,,, "x" player has shown server dedication by taking x number of keeps, etc....trolls don’t really fight against their home server after all....

Also, when you start a new job you have a probationary period...why can’t that be implemented into wvw in some way...again,,,using achievements or rank? Player x joins wvw,,,has to walk dollies, refresh siege, etc, x number of times ,,,,or something equivalent to a probationary period showing server dedication....earning rights,,like siege placement.

Pandaman.4758:

• I come to your BL and take all three southern camps. I build balli with the camp’s supply in the back corner of each camp. I leave to fight in EB. I come back right before the balli expire with a small zerg and take those same camps back. Those balli expire and I have 200 supply in each camp that I create omegas with. (Yes, alternatively, I could create half my golem army now and come back later to create the other half for the same effect. Except that golems will be trolled away, see below.)

Oh no, I didn’t mean the siege will just dump the supply in any supply depot, obviously it would have to be a friendly one and excess supply being held should be purged when a depot is flipped.

Yeah… so I’m using ballistas in the corner of the camp to “hold” supply. Later, right before the siege expires, I return and retake the camp if it’s not mine. And when the siege expires, I get an extra 100 supply in the camp.

Pandaman.4758:

this problem is a purely behavioral one and not a mechanics exploit.

Apologies that this above quote is somewhat out of context, but it’s exactly the point. Trolling is a behavioral problem. Fixing it with mechanics is not the way to do it.

John Corpening.9847:

…

• For commanders this time is reduced by 2 minutes for each member of your squad for up to 20 minutes.
  …

Just my two cents with this. I don’t like being part of a squad, so I would never be able to help a commander with this. I like being able to see all the commander tags (when/if there are ever more than one on my server ), so I don’t join ever join a commanders squad. I’ll run in the zerg with the commander, but have never/don’t join their squad.

Also (not sure if its been brought up yet) what happens if someone in the squad logs off or switches maps/leaves wvw? Are they still part of the “squad”? Are they auto kicked from the squad if they leave the map?

Don’t think vote will work, if you take a player like me I kitten off players a lot because I curse them for taking supply from my home (Crag, Dawn, Cliff) and then they will start to vote away all my siege with I build there, had a girl that started to cry because she tooth I was unfair when she only took 10supply so she should get me banned and all here guild’s should report me, bla bla bla…

As I wrote earlier make it easy let owner limit how much supply you can take out when no sword on building, to own you need buffs running, how you then can make so someone can take over is simple the one with most buffs running takes owner ship.

Yes trolls can then make guild and start buffs, but they will need to have buffs that help the server running to be able to mess with the server.

McWolfy.5924:

I still think the oversieging is the trollest thing and greatest funkiller mechanism.
15 sieges in a little tower is common. Sieging a t3 keep for hours is just not fun. I dont say delete sieges from the game but now the sieges are about siege weapon-anti siege-siege disablers. No real fights. The only way to capture a sieged objective if you avoid the fight and ninja the objective (0 fun)

Have you tried EotM? There’s no sieging there, only mindless karma training.

If your enemy has no will to fight it’s incredibly easy, I would say even too easy to capture any T3 keep save for maybe hills.

EFWinters.5421:

McWolfy.5924:

I still think the oversieging is the trollest thing and greatest funkiller mechanism.
15 sieges in a little tower is common. Sieging a t3 keep for hours is just not fun. I dont say delete sieges from the game but now the sieges are about siege weapon-anti siege-siege disablers. No real fights. The only way to capture a sieged objective if you avoid the fight and ninja the objective (0 fun)

Have you tried EotM? There’s no sieging there, only mindless karma training.

If your enemy has no will to fight it’s incredibly easy, I would say even too easy to capture any T3 keep save for maybe hills.

There is sieging, though all it is is just open field ACs. Though I have seen the occasional gate treb in the keep…

John Corpening.9847:

I was about to toss out the exhaustion idea altogether because of the legitimate concerns of small groups that a good number of you have brought up but this post gave me another perspective on it. I’m going to merge some of the ideas you guys have put forth into a new iteration on the design you and I have been working out.

Here is the new proposal based on your ideas:

• Siege Dismantling
  • You DO NOT get exhaustion from placing siege
  • If you own a piece of siege:
    • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Dismantle” that will drop the timer down to one minute
  • If you do not own a piece of siege:
    • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Vote Dismantle”
    • If a piece of siege gets 5 votes:
      • The timer on the siege drops to 5 minutes
      • The player who placed the siege gets a stack of exhaustion
        • In this proposal this is the only way to get exhaustion
  • When a siege timer is reduced to 0 it is dismantled
    • All siege that is dismantled drops 25% of the supply it took to construct
• Exhaustion
  • A player who has 5 stacks of exhaustion can no longer place siege until they have 0 stacks of exhaustion
  • A stack of exhaustion is removed:
    • After 5 minutes
      • For commanders this time is reduced by 2 minutes for each member of your squad for up to 20 minutes
    • For each enemy player defeated
    • For each objective taken

This proposal has these properties:

• Play is not affected at all for anyone unless they repeatedly place siege that is repeatedly voted down
• Players are encouraged to clean up their siege to get a refund and to prevent their siege being voted down
• Players can police themselves by voting down bad siege
• Players who get exhaustion incorrectly can easily remove it by playing WvW normally
• The more siege that gets placed that is left unattended the easier it will be to lose the privilege of placing siege.
• Commanders who actually have people following them can bypass the bulk of the penalty and should easily remove the rest through normal play

For other topics, there seems to be general agreement that some sort of labeling or filtering will help with siege that is dropped onto the area you are trying to build in. Also, I agree that build sites could have a smaller footprint.

Again there were a lot of really good suggestions! I am reading every single post in this thread (and you guys are keeping me busy ) so I really appreciate those of you who have stayed constructive, on topic and within the guidelines that were set down. It is really helping us think out possible ways together of how we could address this problem in a way that would work for everyone.

So now…

ROUND THREE … DISCUSS!

In this scenario, exhaustion wouldn’t accomplish anything. For supply wasting, if that troll has any sense, they will dismantle their own siege before someone else can come and give them exhaustion. In an offensive group, the troll will still be standing in capture points and tagging downed enemies to get credit and burn their exhaustion stacks. Offensive siege trolls don’t need to place a lot of siege, though, so they likely won’t even care.

I do like the concept of dismantling siege to help avoid the limit, but I would be conservative about the number needed to dismantle someone else’s siege. Also, it would need to be made clear to players that rams have their own limit.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yeah… so I’m using ballistas in the corner of the camp to “hold” supply. Later, right before the siege expires, I return and retake the camp if it’s not mine. And when the siege expires, I get an extra 100 supply in the camp.

Oh, duh, I see now. Well, it wouldn’t be ballistae because I did put forth a caveat of the refund being within a reasonable range of the depot, so no squirreling siege off in some corner of the map. The scenario you describe would have to be done with siege golems, but it would probably be better served for them to move the golem to their garrison and let it expire there (effectively becoming a piloted supply dolyak for the price of the blueprint) than to hide it.

Coupled with the previous concerns, golems will definitely need a different approach than other sieges.

Apologies that this above quote is somewhat out of context, but it’s exactly the point. Trolling is a behavioral problem. Fixing it with mechanics is not the way to do it.

Well, yes, in my first few replies to this thread I’ve stated that behavioral problems need behavioral solutions, but since there’s a hesitation to swing the banhammer I think the next best thing would be to remove the incentives that reward such behavior; this is the basis for my latest round of suggestions, because I think it’s potentially less complicated and more reliable a change than the current direction the brainstorming is going.

The problem with turning siege engines around is that it doesn’t have a “reward” that can be removed; the act of turning the siege is basically its own reward, you can’t remove it without directly impacting a legitimate player’s ability to use it as well, hence why I say it’s purely behavioral (as in there might be no mechanical change that can mitigate it).

Small problem and only really impacts a few servers.
Spy play is encouraged, you can cross server rep guilds and party.
Some of the proposed changes will hurt small party play (havoc teams).
Small percentage of players post/read forums so small idea count to pull from.
Trolls got what they wanted, 8 pages of talk all about them – we just gave them a gold star.

We ran into this on Ebay a while back and adapted. It wasn’t a game changer when compared to cross server party, repping, and public comm use. If any of the T1 – 6 servers are that frustrated by it then move to the lower servers.

Pandaman.4758:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yeah… so I’m using ballistas in the corner of the camp to “hold” supply. Later, right before the siege expires, I return and retake the camp if it’s not mine. And when the siege expires, I get an extra 100 supply in the camp.

Oh, duh, I see now. Well, it wouldn’t be ballistae because I did put forth a caveat of the refund being within a reasonable range of the depot, so no squirreling siege off in some corner of the map. The scenario you describe would have to be done with siege golems, but it would probably be better served for them to move the golem to their garrison and let it expire there (effectively becoming a piloted supply dolyak for the price of the blueprint) than to hide it.

Coupled with the previous concerns, golems will definitely need a different approach than other sieges.

I think you can probably find good places to hide siege inside/near camps such that even if they’re capped, those siege won’t be noticed (especially if its just capping against NPCs only): At lowlands, perhaps inside the house on stilts; at south camp, in the apple(?) grove; at vale, behind the fireplace.

As for behavioral issues requiring behavioral solutions: banning is the only way that I see working. It’s just whack-a-mole in this thread. Except worse; each individual troll solution hurts the honest player in some way. And the mole pops back up anyway.

Shadow.3475:

Don’t think vote will work, if you take a player like me I kitten off players a lot because I curse them for taking supply from my home (Crag, Dawn, Cliff) and then they will start to vote away all my siege with I build there, had a girl that started to cry because she tooth I was unfair when she only took 10supply so she should get me banned and all here guild’s should report me, bla bla bla…

As I wrote earlier make it easy let owner limit how much supply you can take out when no sword on building, to own you need buffs running, how you then can make so someone can take over is simple the one with most buffs running takes owner ship.

Yes trolls can then make guild and start buffs, but they will need to have buffs that help the server running to be able to mess with the server.

You can claim without any buffs. It doesn’t take much to be able to claim. So not only have there been troll guilds claiming things just so others cannot, now you are giving them tools to troll further. And with guild buffs working across servers… it is even easier and cheaper now. As for cursing out players, if you go to the extreme like it seems you do, then yes you could very well have a suspension, because that behavior puts you on par with the trolls, or possibly worse.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

In this scenario, exhaustion wouldn’t accomplish anything. For supply wasting, if that troll has any sense, they will dismantle their own siege before someone else can come and give them exhaustion.

It’s worse than that.

The proposal for self-dismantling paired with exhaustion stacking gives the troll the ability to endlessly build and dismantle, without exhaustion.

Seems that in his excitement, John has let us paint him into a corner where he’s overthinking it, now.

John, I appreciate you opening this topic. Siege trolling has been a frustrating issue and I think a lot of us are very eager to find a solution to this.

- Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?

I honestly don’t think the trolls are that numerous. If there was a strict policy in place to deal with them (a specific rule in the terms of service plus a way to report offenders) it shouldn’t take up much of a GM’s time. Honestly, without GM involvement there will be continued problems no matter what system we devise. Trolls will always find ways to skirt around the game mechanics.

If you want to shift the burden of policing over to us players, I think that could be accomplished. Let’s say a player identifies a troll, and they right click on their portrait to find an option to report him as a siege troll. If ten (or however many) players do the same thing, it’s safe to say this is a siege troll and should be kicked off the map. Or at least they lose the ability to drain supply from towers.

- What are the characteristics of bad behavior that are different than good behavior?

Rapid draining of tower/keep supply by one person, rapid deployment of siege, and deployment of siege to obstruct useful areas (such as placing siege directly atop the supply hut so honest players can’t get supply) are all traits.

- How do we prevent bad behavior without making too big of an impact on good behavior?

Some things can be in the game mechanics, such as not allowing siege to be built directly atop fixed NPCs or inside supply huts. Unfortunately, anything done to prevent rapid deployment could impair our ability to rapidly deploy legitimate siege.

- What restrictions might we be able to live with as good players in order to prevent bad behavior?

Any restrictions could limit our ability to legitimately use siege to defend or to repair walls, which may swing the advantage to the attacker. I know attackers use siege as well, but I don’t think they will be impacted as much because it’s not like they have to go to a supply hut to build more rams, they can only use the supply they carry before they have to run back and get more.

- To kick off the brainstorm I’ll throw out this idea: When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion” A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes If a player has three stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege

I’m somewhat against the Exhaustion idea, though I admit it has some merit. I just think trolls will find a way around it. Any automatic system in place should be augmented by a way to report trolls to GMs and there should be a written policy to punish and/or ban these kinds of trolls.

I think that Labeling is still the way to go, a filter where you only build siege you want. The exhaustion idea has merit but again I go back to a simple time factor, this voting and such causes me pause as the time it takes sometimes just for me to get someone to second my vote when removing party members.

Honestly, if the troll throws mutiple pieces of siege imagine voting for the timer to be shorter on 10 pieces of Siege…. By the time you get them all voted and removed your enemy has definitely wiped you.

in addition to ‘dismantle’ option…

collision detection on siege?

apologies if this is duplicate, didn’t read every post.

Jef.6407:

- To kick off the brainstorm I’ll throw out this idea: When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion” A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes If a player has three stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege

There goes any form of small havoc squad play. They have to be able to drop siege and run between tower / camp to build quickly. Any form of exhaustion will kill this aspect of play.

I’m somewhat against the Exhaustion idea, though I admit it has some merit. I just think trolls will find a way around it. Any automatic system in place should be augmented by a way to report trolls to GMs and there should be a written policy to punish and/or ban these kinds of trolls.

I’m glad you are somewhat against it. Trolls will be trolls and this is a small problem in the bigger picture of WvW. Happens on a small subset of total server count and doesn’t impact any scoring. If someone can post statistics whereas a troll directly changed a match outcome I’d be willing to admit my view on it is wrong (not that it matters).

Reporting could work if you add in additional metrics such has player/enemy kills or the taking of towers or camps. You can again tie this to a commander tag and squad requirement to place siege. Havoc teams and solo roamers have tags so it would work and we now have color codes to choose from anyway.

Dropping siege and incurring a debuff will kill certain styles of play that are pretty popular (not everyone zergs). Restricting placement of siege will also be frustrating because not everyone places it in the same place.

Bertrand.3057:

I do wonder if there is any number you can find that will strike the right balance across all servers and all times. Making it so that 5 or 10 people can go around dismantling siege will create problems. With a higher number, then it’s a real distraction for a server if the griefer decides to mass their siege in an inconvenient location. I hope you can do a good job of accounting for all the different roles in WvW and thinking about how the player experience will change for each of these roles once a candidate situation is implemented.

Anyways, I have to hand you my compliments for catching the idea of making build sites have a smaller footprint, I didn’t see that myself while reading the thread but I like it!

They could definitely adjust the votes needed based on area population (a circle of some radius around the target siege) and/or map population. To keep it from being confusing, when using the siege, there could be some text in the top right of the screen (ANET’s favorite place!) with “Votes to Dismantle: n out of N” where n is the number of votes already garnered, and N is the total number of votes needed.

Furthermore, I would expect that they could have a sort of “frequent exhaustion” mechanic that trolls could trigger, barring them for much longer periods. There’d be a lot of ways to do this, and the key would be to use variables and thresholds for those variables that couldn’t possibly be triggered by anyone else. Say, if you’ve placed more than 200 siege weapons in a match, and greater than 95% of them have been voted down, you can’t place any more siege for the duration of the match. Could even have an additional variable of ‘fraction of supply to build siege that siege owner contributed’, to make it extremely unlikely to impact a really lazy commander who never votes down their own siege, since the for the most part, trolls are lone actors. This might require some additional logging than they currently do, though.

The key is finding variables and numbers for those variables that will work, and having some way to present the ‘end result’ of whatever criteria are used to players so that players don’t necessarily need to understand the mechanics in detail to understand what’s happening (just like you don’t need to understand the formula for precision to crit chance to equip gear with more precision and see your crit chance go up, for example).

Obviously, no matter what system you have in place, you’re not going to entirely stop trolls. At best, you can curtail the current trolling activities, and cause them to troll with different behavior. How about placing useful siege backwards, and voting it down once an attack starts? How about voting down useful siege in currently deserted areas or maps (if votes needed scales with number of players on the map or in the area)? How about taking golems and ‘losing’ them in an obscure corner of the map so they eventually despawn?

There can be further solutions to some of these problems, even. Trolls placing useful siege and down-voting it before an attack could (barring unforeseen issues) be solved with allowing players to override an owner vote, or with not allowing an owner to vote dismantle when a structure is under attack, or any number of other solutions.

The question is, does the system reduce the effectiveness of the troll enough that they won’t bother, or at least that they will lose considerable effectiveness, without harming legitimate players? I’d say the current proposal from ANET, with the obvious numbers/mechanic tweaking, is better than what we have now. It’s much better if there’s a ‘frequent exhaustion’ mechanic, and even better still if it proactively addresses possible new troll behaviors (place useful siege, dismantle by vote when it is needed; place siege backwards). Whatever they implement does not need to be perfect, only good enough to be a significant improvement on what we have now.

I’m still seeing some people saying that reporting triggering anything ‘automatic’ is a good idea. It is not, unless that which is triggered automatically is a review by a GM. There is a legitimate reason why when you report someone, they are not automatically banned for ‘verbal abuse’ or ‘botting’ or whatever. Because it can be used to troll other people intentionally or not. Do you know how often actual players were reported for botting 1 1/2 years ago? Probably almost every ranger in pve that happened to use a bear for a pet, just because it was the preferred of those bot farming. I followed and watched behavior before I reported any because I did not want to report actual players. But many other people rushed to report, (sometimes stand there typing to guild etc), and then were shocked when the player asked why they were watching them. I remember someone saying “OMG I thought you were a bot!” and then being upset because they reported them until told it takes multiple reports and a GM review.

Point is, under no circumstance should it be possible for the community to dictate whether or not someone can play in any game mode. It can be abused, and it WILL, without a doubt, at some point be used against legitimate players, while the trolls keep on.

Know what is a bigger issue than troll siege? People buying upgrades just to drain supply. It’s easy, it’s practically anonymous, and it does far more harm in a shorter period of time. Yet, just a few posts up you have another example of the problem of ‘community policing’: One person thinks fortify is useless and only trolls buy that, while others rely on fortify (after waypoint), while still others think fortify should come before waypoint upgrade. But I think most everyone can agree upgrading ‘merchants’ or guard level in a tower/keep is pretty much useless and only wastes supply. And yet, very recently I saw a keep constantly supply starved because after someone queued a legitimate upgrade on a paper keep (ex: walls/gates) someone else came along and queued ‘merchants’. Result? 0 supply. It’s hard enough when people won’t listen and waste keep/tower supply to repair a wall being trebbed, or a door that is about to upgrade anyways. Once a keep is upgraded, it’s a lot easier for a smaller group to defend it, but to get it there, upgrades wasting supply do a very effective job of quickly supply starving you, dragging out the upgrades, and making it even easier for your enemy to come in and take it. At least all those ballistas could be used to kill people after they break in.

Although it was not listed in the original post, several people have cited the practice of starting upgrades that spend cost immediately (personnel upgrades) during defense as a form of “trolling.” However, when executed right before losing control this is also a legitimate tactic, the equivalent of a scorched earth retreat. The losing defenders are denying their opponent supplies that are now lost to them. This is why when you have broken through doors/walls (or reached a defended camp) you make sure to kill the Quartermaster. The good maneuver and the bad maneuver are indistinguishable except in timing and intent.

Any system that requires a Commander tag is unfair to gold-poor players, small groups, and small servers.

Not to make it bigger than it is, but this is a reflection of a problem of social science that has gone unresolved for thousands of years.

• In any social setting that desires to permit free action, it will be possible for someone to act against the better intentions of the group (crime and exploitation) by applying its actions to the harm of others.
• You cannot trust the group to regulate behavior justly because it is a collection of individuals, some of whom can be manipulated.
• Any regulatory system the enforcement of which will universally prevent unwanted behavior will necessarily infringe upon the freedom of action of the individuals in the social setting.

You cannot deny someone the capacity to punch a stranger in the face without also preventing his ability to save a stranger from falling off a cliff. Siege Trolls are very annoying. They are using the same actions permitted to everyone, but in the wrong way. Is there any way to prevent them from doing this in a fashion that doesn’t hurt regular players’ efforts? Is there any system that can be implemented that cannot be similarly exploited?

It’s great that the development team is taking an active interest in such items and that we have people working toward a solution, but it may well be that what we’ve got is the best we’ll get.

Ocosh.5843:

Although it was not listed in the original post, several people have cited the practice of starting upgrades that spend cost immediately (personnel upgrades) during defense as a form of “trolling.” However, when executed right before losing control this is also a legitimate tactic, the equivalent of a scorched earth retreat. The losing defenders are denying their opponent supplies that are now lost to them. This is why when you have broken through doors/walls (or reached a defended camp) you make sure to kill the Quartermaster. The good maneuver and the bad maneuver are indistinguishable except in timing and intent.

Also very true, but once those upgrades are run that tactic cannot be used (obviously).

Goes right back to whatever is done to try to stop the trolls will only hurt the actual players.

Guild should not be able to claim anything without buff running was the first I wrote.

And blocking so players cant take supply from a tower/keep is helping not trolling.

So annoying helping in dolys hour after hour just so kids can go to tower take supply for its closer then a camp.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

Shadow.3475:

Don’t think vote will work, if you take a player like me I kitten off players a lot because I curse them for taking supply from my home (Crag, Dawn, Cliff) and then they will start to vote away all my siege with I build there, had a girl that started to cry because she tooth I was unfair when she only took 10supply so she should get me banned and all here guild’s should report me, bla bla bla…

As I wrote earlier make it easy let owner limit how much supply you can take out when no sword on building, to own you need buffs running, how you then can make so someone can take over is simple the one with most buffs running takes owner ship.

Yes trolls can then make guild and start buffs, but they will need to have buffs that help the server running to be able to mess with the server.

You can claim without any buffs. It doesn’t take much to be able to claim. So not only have there been troll guilds claiming things just so others cannot, now you are giving them tools to troll further. And with guild buffs working across servers… it is even easier and cheaper now. As for cursing out players, if you go to the extreme like it seems you do, then yes you could very well have a suspension, because that behavior puts you on par with the trolls, or possibly worse.

Giving select people control over the existence of something as important as defensive siege is a huge mistake. All people should have equal access to the use/building of siege.
And there is no need to complicate this issue any further with debuffs/buffs, squad requirements etc.
There are 2 ways to to combat this. Many people have been asking for quite some time now (including myself) for a revamp of the Reporting System.
Add:
~ Siege Griefing
to the Reporting Options.
And to take it a step further, add a few more descriptive terms to streamline information coming from the reporting system to speed up the process. example:
~ Underground Exploiting
~ Teleport Exploiting
~ Emote Spamming
~ I saw this dude flying… w/e, etc

I believe making the effort to utilize a proper report system is the key. (As long as there is and adequate response team for the system.)
This report system could be specifically for WvW & the bans applied could be so as well.
The second way IS policing. However Anet, if need be, I am quite sure you could find many available, & qualified players willing to donate their time to moderating wvw for the good of their server and their personal gaming experience.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

Likely all the ways you can think of to ‘fix’ the issue of troll siege could actually have serious unintended consequences and punish the wrong players while not having a real effect on ‘trolls’.

Ensign.2189:

I cannot think of any preventative mechanic that wouldn’t cause more problems for people playing the game as intended; things like supply caps or siege caps per player would be unnecessarily burdensome, especially as on more organized maps all siege placements tend to be funneled through a few individuals.
This is something that is best policed by the community; there are relatively few siege trolls, and a minimal, intelligent system should be able to deal with it after the fact.

Tiffany.8576:

See, I knew this would happen. Rather than just dealing with the tiny minority of people who perpetuate abuse by handing out bans (trust me, only a few bans would be enough to make people think this wasn’t so cool anymore), we’re gonna end up with a convoluted system which penalizes everyone and makes it a lot more annoying to legitimately siege up our towers and keeps.
gg.

Tiffany.8576:

Ban the tiny, tiny minority who are partaking in this now and set the precedent that it is an actionable offense and it will all but eradicate it forever. We do not need changes to the core mechanics of how siege and supply work.

este.8651:

I think we are going too far in talking about adding new or changing existing features of the game. The only features in this case that need to be implemented are a better and smarter reporting system. We are talking about a very small minority of individuals and independent mass reporting of individuals shouldn’t be too difficult to investigate. Please dont change gameplay over a few people. This could change the whole culture of “reporting doesnt do anything” and help restore the faith.

Fay.2357:

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. The single biggest action that Anet can implement to reduce trolling is putting a fast trigger on the ban hammer.
There have been several situations where massive numbers of people were banned due to exploiting market/crafting bugs. Due to these situations, the entire playerbase is now (rightfully so) extremely wary of exploiting things that smell like bugs, for fear of getting banned.
there needs to be an incredibly strict banning policy with regards to trolling/griefing/hacking. Once people start getting permabans for this behavior, the number of people doing it will drop off precipitously.

Torsailr.8456:

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.

Nokaru.7831:

Equal Enforcement:

• Whatever solution is reached, Commanders should not be exempt from them. I’ve seen dedicated trolls who are themselves Commanders that intentionally divert the army in a hazardous direction.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions!
John

John,
I totally appreciate this discussion and the fact that you guys have your attention on this problem.
However, some of these suggestions seem more like complications. Especially the exhaustion debuff.
The more complicated wvw is, the less people will be willing to ‘give it a try’ or stick with it after they do.

Lord Kuru.3685:

You stop siege trolling, they’ll buy merchants during an attack. You stop that, they’ll suicide golems. You stop that, they’ll run around your towers, turning all your siege backwards (yes, I’ve seen this).

You have to stop the trolls directly.

Just look at the dungeon exploit situation in this very game. Band-aid fixes like invisible walls for two years did nothing but temporarily slow down exploiters. And now (finally) Anet has GMs joining parties to ban people.

Zaxares.5419:

Yeah, as I said earlier, as much as we can try to automate the process, at the end of the day, we will still need someone to come in, evaluate the situation, and make a judgment call on whether somebody is being a troll and take punitive action. If it is not feasible for ANet to provide a team of GMs to do so, then perhaps some of the monitoring could be turned over to the community, by way of a Player’s Tribunal, volunteer GMs etc.

A WvW Reporting System that is monitored, a Map-wide Voting System, or Match-up Moderators are what I believe is really needed.

Galera.8703:

I really believe the easiest solution is using a system thats already in place. Trolls, as someone mentioned, usually travel to a server specifically to troll..using lower level, non-dedicated alts. Therefore, just use the achievement system and ranking in a way that limits WHO can place siege at all…..for instance, a new achievement,,, “x” player has shown server dedication by taking x number of keeps, etc….trolls don’t really fight against their home server after all….

Also, when you start a new job you have a probationary period…why can’t that be implemented into wvw in some way…again,,,using achievements or rank? Player x joins wvw,,,has to walk dollies, refresh siege, etc, x number of times ,,,,or something equivalent to a probationary period showing server dedication….earning rights,,like siege placement.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Some trolls are uplevels on new accounts, many others are full level 80s with 14k achievement points. You shouldn’t be able to earn the right to troll by playing the game.

Nightingale.8364:

Firstly, thanks for responding to this problem is such a positive manner.

I really think that the problem is being blown out of proportion. Not in the effects that siege trolling can have on a server but by the numbers of people actually involved. On my server we have 2 identified siege trolls who operate at different times of the day. Thats it. If every server had the same amount thats what 60 people?

Do we really need a new, comlicated system brought into place to deal with these 60 people (across all servers)? Any changes bring with them the risk of creating new (maybe even worse) situations, or new unseen ways to troll.

What really needs to be sorted out is the reporting system. I can understand that the present system is time consuming for the GM’s involved. What needs to be done is for you to specify what exaclty you feel siege trolling is and set up a means for the wvw community to be able to report these people to you in a way that simplfies the processus.

You say you do not want the “banhammer” to fall. Why? Make it very clear, set up the rules, give people the correct tools to report (this could be via a video or screenshots) and then deal with them by simply banning them from wvw. Its your responsibilty to set this up so that your game can be played by us in the way you want.

There is no need to create a brand new system to deal with a very small minority of people who disturb the game for the vaste majority. Any new system would affect the whole player base, this is not needed.

And here is is in a nutshell. There are reporting systems for verbal abuse, botting, scamming and other harmful behavior. Why can there not be a simple report for griefing? There are not that many trolls out there and they could be culled pretty quickly if there was an enforceable standard of behavior. These people are misusing a game mechanic to affect a competitive outcome. How is this acceptable? Any programmer time spent on these trolls should be devoted to automated collecting of statistics on their behavior once reported, not on systems that burden the rest of us.

Be careful about introducing any tools that allows players to regulate other players because they could create a whole new set of problems. Anyone who has been in the thick of their WvW community and has dealt with TeamSpeak or forum politics can tell you that giving players power over one another can turn ugly real fast. Gamers are not always reasonable people.

I think the dismantle/exhaustion idea has some merit since it can be tweaked to reduce its impact on legitimate play. I also like that it directly addresses the impact on siege cap and a fortification’s supply. I would suggest giving the dismantle skill a really long cooldown to stop a few trolls from running around dismantling good siege, and perhaps scale the number of votes needed based on the type of siege.

I am in favour of simply placing this in the domain of GMs because the few worst offenders have a disproportionately large share of the impact. However finely you can tweak a solution it will still affect ordinary players.

I would suggest instead of a system that limits all players with the exhaustion idea, use the existing area around a commander tag (supplyinfo) and make it so that only the commander could drop siege in that area. So no if you find a siege troll, you send a commander to tag up and follow him, and he can’t drop and siege. It also prevents the accidental dropping of siege by other players at sites during a siege attack. Now this wont stop say a troll that comes on a tags up inside enemy sites to prevent you from building siege to defend, but it will certainly make them much more obvious on the map, and ppl are able to add them to a watch list, or report them if necessary.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

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 this is a good start. Unlike other sieges, flame rams are very circumstantial. You have no reasons to deploy them in any places where they cant be of any uses. So, knowing that, every time someone would like to drop a ram you could check if the placement would result in a useless ram for the given context. If yes, you can’t deploy it period. If the troll want to deploy a legitimate ram, well, thanks.

For the other sieges it become a lot more difficult to say. I think we can improve the automation governing siege deployment but, down the line, some human intervention is necessary. Making a few examples ala Dhuum of old would go a long way.

If there was any type of punishment for these players it would certainly discourage these players from doing this. As it stand now siege trolls and hackers roam free without any thought of reprisal. This thread just goes to show Anet is afraid to ban players for abusing a system. If or when Anet decides to actually do something to these players then you might think twice about it. there can not be that many trolls or hackers going around at once in WvW that 1 Dev can take care of this.

Shadow.3475:

Guild should not be able to claim anything without buff running was the first I wrote.

And blocking so players cant take supply from a tower/keep is helping not trolling.

So annoying helping in dolys hour after hour just so kids can go to tower take supply for its closer then a camp.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

Shadow.3475:

Don’t think vote will work, if you take a player like me I kitten off players a lot because I curse them for taking supply from my home (Crag, Dawn, Cliff) and then they will start to vote away all my siege with I build there, had a girl that started to cry because she tooth I was unfair when she only took 10supply so she should get me banned and all here guild’s should report me, bla bla bla…

As I wrote earlier make it easy let owner limit how much supply you can take out when no sword on building, to own you need buffs running, how you then can make so someone can take over is simple the one with most buffs running takes owner ship.

Yes trolls can then make guild and start buffs, but they will need to have buffs that help the server running to be able to mess with the server.

You can claim without any buffs. It doesn’t take much to be able to claim. So not only have there been troll guilds claiming things just so others cannot, now you are giving them tools to troll further. And with guild buffs working across servers… it is even easier and cheaper now. As for cursing out players, if you go to the extreme like it seems you do, then yes you could very well have a suspension, because that behavior puts you on par with the trolls, or possibly worse.

Again that does not help. Under your proposal even if they have to have a buff running to claim, they could just use the +5 supply, yet set so no one can withdraw to defend it…

drmicro.7659:

I would suggest instead of a system that limits all players with the exhaustion idea, use the existing area around a commander tag (supplyinfo) and make it so that only the commander could drop siege in that area. So no if you find a siege troll, you send a commander to tag up and follow him, and he can’t drop and siege. It also prevents the accidental dropping of siege by other players at sites during a siege attack. Now this wont stop say a troll that comes on a tags up inside enemy sites to prevent you from building siege to defend, but it will certainly make them much more obvious on the map, and ppl are able to add them to a watch list, or report them if necessary.

As said a number of times, anything tied to a commander tag is just opening new issues. Example: Troll sits in tower, tags up, does nothing. In some towers, it’s likely they could prevent siege from being used in any area that would allow defending, then waypoint out just before a wall/gate goes down. I know of some people that would do just this.

edit: additionally, you are SUGGESTING for someone to troll another player. Just think on that…

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

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 this is a good start. Unlike other sieges, flame rams are very circumstantial. You have no reasons to deploy them in any places where they cant be of any uses. So, knowing that, every time someone would like to drop a ram you could check if the placement would result in a useless ram for the given context. If yes, you can’t deploy it period. If the troll want to deploy a legitimate ram, well, thanks.

For the other sieges it become a lot more difficult to say. I think we can improve the automation governing siege deployment but, down the line, some human intervention is necessary. Making a few examples ala Dhuum of old would go a long way.

You can use one at the top of stairs to fear people back down, as well as send them flying. Would that not be a legitimate use? Yes they are limited in scope, and rams do disappear faster than other siege, but even a change such as that would affect more than some people seem to consider. And a system to identify what is a ‘legitimate’ use or not? Good luck. Not possible. Unless of course the only legitimate use is on a gate you don’t own, but why should a player not be allowed to think of an alternative use for siege than ‘intended’ that could still help in a fight?

I have seen people here say a ballista is useless, yet I myself have seen ballistas allow a group of 5 to defeat a group of 15 that tried to take a camp, or a group of 15 (along with a few arrow carts) defeat a group of ~40 trying to take a keep. I would say definitely not useless.

Focus on supply expenditure
- everyone has Daily Account limit of Supply (eg. 250/500)
-Art of War upgrade that will allow WvW focused Guild members unlimited Supply
- Art of War upgrade to facilitate militia to temporarily join for X hours (Adopt a Militia)

You can use one at the top of stairs to fear people back down, as well as send them flying. Would that not be a legitimate use? Yes they are limited in scope, and rams do disappear faster than other siege, but even a change such as that would affect more than some people seem to consider. And a system to identify what is a ‘legitimate’ use or not? Good luck. Not possible. Unless of course the only legitimate use is on a gate you don’t own, but why should a player not be allowed to think of an alternative use for siege than ‘intended’ that could still help in a fight?

I have seen people here say a ballista is useless, yet I myself have seen ballistas allow a group of 5 to defeat a group of 15 that tried to take a camp, or a group of 15 (along with a few arrow carts) defeat a group of ~40 trying to take a keep. I would say definitely not useless.

I’m totally in favor of ingenuity and original uses of sieges. I forgot the fear effect. I myself often used rams as an ele to gain a large boost to my damage reduction while key elemental affinities are on cool down (I also use the fear in that case, of course).

Oh, well… why can’t it ever be simple…

Shadow.1675:

Focus on supply expenditure
- everyone has Daily Account limit of Supply (eg. 250/500)
-Art of War upgrade that will allow WvW focused Guild members unlimited Supply
- Art of War upgrade to facilitate militia to temporarily join for X hours (Adopt a Militia)

And nothing is stopping the trolls from using that which in turn leads back to the original problem, also you should not be punished just because your guild doesn’t wvw.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

snip
Oh, well… why can’t it ever be simple…

Because then it wouldn’t be fun :P

Its been referenced before already in this thread and I will repeat it here..

There are a small handful of actual Siege Trollers across all servers, too few in fact to warrant a mechanism being implemented into the game to combat them. The ONLY real solution that is fair for everyone is to have the Siege Trollers reported using the inbuilt reporting tool and then have ANET investigate this themselves, implementing anything else will just impact the game mechanics and players alike.

Why hamper/hinder the game with restrictions that will effect everyone in WvW when we are talking about a small core of siege trollers!

Please ANET, let us use the in-game reporting tool and then you investigate these siege trolls yourself. We will make it easy for you to find them, the reporting tool will tell you who they are and on what server to find them on.

—Here’s a solution to golem trolls—
There are trolls that are known to destroy omega golems that are stored in garrison with fall damage.
If you get the golem you ride killed due to fall damage, you’re either a very incompetent driver or a troller.

-When the golem you ride in is destroyed due to fall damage make it so that you can’t ride another golem for x minutes. Increase x minutes if trolls are still reported doing it.

-If the troller tries to bypass this by just leaving very low health for every golem, make it so that if you take more than 25% fall damage(in one single fall, or many consecutive falls) in even one golem during 1 hour, you can’t ride another golem for x minutes.

I echo sentiments that the number of really toxic trolls on each server is very small. Trolling can be mitigated but prevention is impossible. The question is, is it worth developer resources to brainstorm, implement, and then tune a system to try to curtail the behavior of a very few players? Invariably GM oversight will still be necessary due to discovered loopholes. Presumably, reports happen already which must be waded through.

With the current proposal it seems like it will be a race for a troll to waste as much siege as possible before they get voted exhaustion. What if they just switch to using trebs, which aren’t all that expensive, instead of ballistas? This would be a minimum of 500 supply, and could be more if votes don’t happen fast enough. What prevents them from just changing characters, of which everyone has at least 5? That is a minimum of 2500 supply, or all of the supply from a fully upgraded and stocked keep + all of the supply from a fully upgraded and stocked tower.