Guild Wars 2

Do you remember each and ever siege you put down and why?

It’ll be like a commander reporting their staff ele for using fire skill 2 instead of healing rain when asked for.

“Did you use Lava Font?
“Yeah”
“Do you recall your commander asking for a Healing Rain”
“Yeah”
“Do you recall using Lava Font instead of Healing Rain”
“erm, maybe”
“YOU ARE BANNED!!!”

It’s not that simple to just demand answers for siege you think isnt useful.

Keep it simple. The only reason someone is trolling is because they think they can get away with it.
Make an identity marker on all siege dropped linking it to an account.
Require a screen shot with reports to eliminate false reporting and make the penalty for both (trolling, or false reporting) harsh.

The identity marker can also be done in a code that only staff can link to the registry data of an account to protect the players privacy.

To eliminate excessive world spam from this change add a toggle on off option in order to see or screen shot the identifier code when in WvW.

The only issue beyond this would be throw-away accounts, second accounts, or free accounts that are being used to troll with. Like it or not there needs to be a discussion concerning what accounts can access the WvW portion of the game or a means to identify problem players and where they are accessing the game from.

This is difficult, I know. But beyond requiring registry to include a rigs imprint and all other rigs that access an account I don’t know how else it could be addressed.

If imprinting is an option I would start by requiring all accounts to be scanned for imprint that access an account.

Then implement a means for the registry to be updated when a pc is being retired for a new rig, or an additional one is being added that will access the account. If a pc has been altered or upgraded it can be re-registered with the changes made to the rig.

It may not answer all the issues but most of us don’t have throw-away rigs or laptops.

If imprinting is not an option then there still needs to be a serious discussion concerning accounts that can access the WvW portion of the game to eliminate trolling on throwaway accounts.

As for the exhaustion options being proposed I can tell you by my experiences it would have been detrimental. Often I fully supplied a keep with siege in the wee hours of the morning when there was less than optimal numbers of team members around, not to mention not everyone wants to spend their currency on siege or knows where to place it correctly .

How it will be with the upcoming changes? I have no idea because I’ve not witnessed them yet or seen what players will do to utilize the advantages and disadvantages . And we all know players can be a crafty bunch.

Twinny.9304:

I think we have 2 major issues on why it happens:

1. They are under the assumption that they are doing nothing wrong.

2. Hard to prove that it is them doing it, so as long as they think they are invisible they will continue.

Of course this does not count for every siege troll, but a large portion of them. So any methods is just as good as getting rid of them.

1. Evidence – Make siege placement a map wide addition to the chat system, similar to combat log but in main channel. “Twinny Todd Deployed Balista.”

a. If a tagged Commander placed siege it would say something like: “Commander Twinny Todd Deployed Balista.”

2. Action – Make it reportable with screen shot of given evidence from the chat window, and announce it’s a ban-able/suspend-able offence.

How will it help? – It will partially help as a deterant, in the troll knowing that he is now visible to all on that particular map of his actions. This alone will reduce trolling considerably, and in addition making it reportable will reduce trolling even more.

To avoid people getting reported when they shouldn’t be, for example small Havoc groups/defenders etc (who do usually communicate in map chat what their upto), the report will need to be made but multiple people to be flagged.

Each Siege unit can be dismantled/recycled supplies back into the structure, or to the recyclers if at enemy structure or in open field, but to avoid trolling of dismantling well placed siege, each siege requires 3 separate individuals to interact with it to recycle it.

In addition to this each siege could have the persons name prefixed infront of it, for example looking at the siege built or unbuilt on the ground would be named “Twinny Todd’s Superior Balista.” So you could even see for example, if I was the troll and their are 5 x balista’s and and 2 x rams at a random indestructible wall, all with my name infront of them, weather im still on the map or not u have screen shot evidence that I have been trolling.

I mean things like this are much more simple to implement and may not get rid of every troll, (imo nothing will get rid of all of them), but will certainly make them near non existent in time.

btw this recycling siege business could even add some fun tactics to the game recycling rams on a outer gate to use on an inner gate.

I like this idea, even if there weren’t any siege trolls at all. Though I’d take it a step further. I’d add having it broadcast the general location of the siege as well. As someone who tends to drop a ton of legitimate defensive siege, it can be a ton of work to set it all up on your own. If a message popped up in team or map chat along the lines of “Phantom deployed trebuchet in Cragtop” people would know to stop by and help build it. It would also make sure that people get the credit they deserve. A LOT of defensive players go completely unnoticed, because they’re not put in the spotlight to be recognized for their efforts.

I’d also make sure to have the name on the individual piece of siege as well, to really highlight troll siege versus legitimate siege. There are a few odd legitimate placements that someone could mistake for troll siege, but if it’s the name of someone that’s known for setting up defenses, it would be trusted. But if there’s 5 trebs set up behind a supply depot where they can’t hit anything, it’s pretty obvious what’s really going on there, and the name on the siege would act as evidence for reporting, while the chat broadcasts would expose the culprit to the community at large.

And I’d also support some way to manually despawn siege, because sometimes I do mess up some of the more precise placements, and don’t realize it until it’s already built and go to test it. Then I have to wait an hour for it to despawn so I can fix it, and during that timeframe, that’s a vulnerability there. It’s a bit of a sticky situation, though, because you don’t want to have a system where a troll can come in and actively remove all of the legitimate defensive siege, but you’d like for there to be a way for legitimate players to correct innocent mistakes. I dunno, maybe have it so players can remove their own siege with no problems, and commanders can initiate votes to remove siege placed by other people. Which would also combat siege trolls, while helping legitimate defenders out.

I see problems with the “exhaustion” thing though. If I have a group that can help build siege, I can drop a lot more than 3 pieces in 3 minutes. Commanders can burn through that timer at every target they plan on attacking as well. 5 rams or catapults isn’t exactly uncommon. While it would be nice to kinda scale back how easy offense is, injecting new artificial artificial limitations is never the right answer.

Name on the seige was a good idea but ram’s in a open field is a viable option the defense buf + the fear buff I have seen it used well ay a wall entrance breach to hold a 20+ zerg long enough for ac’s to slice them up. (at the time the other players thought it was troll siege) but it won the day

This thread is ridiculous. A good commander will either move to another gate and/or also teach his squad/guild/pug zerg how to build the correct siege. This is literally a L2P issue.
>2015
>still building troll seige
>wat

…at this point i would be more upset with my server mates than the “troll.”

Anet could select certain members the server as moderators with powers to interfere with trolls.

For instance by (temporarily) changing their status to ‘enemy from all servers’ or interfere with their siege and supply activities (the mod can inhibit them to extract supply or build siege for a period of time) or in severe cases, expel the player from the map (with approval from Anet employees).

I know this could go awefully wrong, but I think a system like this could work with proper restrictions. Any thoughts on this?

Buy Some Apples.6390:

Do you remember each and ever siege you put down and why?

It’ll be like a commander reporting their staff ele for using fire skill 2 instead of healing rain when asked for.

“Did you use Lava Font?
“Yeah”
“Do you recall your commander asking for a Healing Rain”
“Yeah”
“Do you recall using Lava Font instead of Healing Rain”
“erm, maybe”
“YOU ARE BANNED!!!”

It’s not that simple to just demand answers for siege you think isnt useful.

I don’t think anyone is advocating people get reported for a single piece of questionable siege. Someone throws one treb build site in front of a gate? Irritating, but possibly a mistake. They place trebs in front of six different gates over the course of an hour? That’s a troll. Someone builds a ram in the lord room, maybe not a troll. Someone builds six ballistae facing random directions inside a supply hut; troll. Most cases aren’t that hard to figure out.

Just spit balling here… but how about Flame rams get a 5 min decay debuff , basically if nobody touches it for 5 mins its gone. Ballistas can’t be placed anywhere without a distance LoS requirement…whatever is decided…. could start there and see how it works out. Could also try making certain siege undeployable in certain areas…etc.

Deniara Devious.3948:

John Corpening.9847:

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

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

A good idea, but it has a problem:

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

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

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

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

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

I agree with all of this which leads me to this comment.

F2P makes banning these trolls only a small deterrent.

We are going to see more and more of these trolls(and trolls in other areas as well). Before there was a monetary obstruction that would slow them down. So the system we had of allowing any level player into wvw worked. Now since that is no longer the case I am unsure if allowing any level of player in is a good idea. There needs to be something that will slow them down like make ftp accounts need to hit a certain level before being allowed into WvW or buy a pass for early entrée. Of course any account that already has it unlocked would be able to create new characters and jump straight in also. This makes it so that they have to invest in the account, either time or money, which both tend to be good deterrents for trolls.

Of course this means you still need to have GMs smacking trolls with the ban hammer. But I really don’t think something like the OPs “exhaustion” will do much. If guilds plan for this and they have even 5 guys make one troll account each, they will be able to do a ton of damage and pretty much ignore the exhaustion.

Adding name on the siege would be a great help in IDing trolls while at the same time giving people name recognition for helping their server correctly.

slingblade.1437:

They place trebs in front of six different gates over the course of an hour? That’s a troll. Someone builds a ram in the lord room, maybe not a troll. Someone builds six ballistae facing random directions inside a supply hut; troll. Most cases aren’t that hard to figure out.

Eh not necessarily. I’ve actually run into players who genuinely didn’t know.

I’d suggest:

“You whisper them and have a conversation, and offer to show them proper spots to drop siege, and they still drop trebs in weird places, multiple times”

Then yep, that’s a troll.

But until you’ve actually attempted a nice friendly conversation trying to help and find out if they’re doing it on purpose …… you could be scaring off your next great builder

Jayne.9251:

slingblade.1437:

They place trebs in front of six different gates over the course of an hour? That’s a troll. Someone builds a ram in the lord room, maybe not a troll. Someone builds six ballistae facing random directions inside a supply hut; troll. Most cases aren’t that hard to figure out.

Eh not necessarily. I’ve actually run into players who genuinely didn’t know.

I’d suggest:

“You whisper them and have a conversation, and offer to show them proper spots to drop siege, and they still drop trebs in weird places, multiple times”

Then yep, that’s a troll.

But until you’ve actually attempted a nice friendly conversation trying to help and find out if they’re doing it on purpose …… you could be scaring off your next great builder

Fair point, and I do take the time to try to help out new players. With a player name attached to siege, it will actually be easier to find and educate people about siege placement and supply management, and if one is incorrectly reported as a troll-siege builder, Anet still would have the opportunity to investigate before banning, and to give out warnings when in doubt.

You’d probably hate me then.

I spent a good month placing siege all over the place (100s of pieces of siege) when I returned and learned of the new fov angles. Out of that 80% were crap placements, but 20% were fantastic new finds and actually wound up becoming the meta (for our server at least) to avoid the fov abuse. (The best thing ever is someone standing there saying “nope, nope, that’s NOT going to work” and then BAM! “OMG IT WORKED!” hehe)

What’s hilarious is that on EU, nobody cared really if I placed things in odd spots (I did actually take the time to explain myself though). On my NA account, I had people flipping the f#$# out because it wasn’t in the same stale places as always, and they tried to use map chat to bully, and when that didn’t work, would use /say to belittle the placements when I was in earshot. Night and day difference. EU benefitted. NA did not, because I just didn’t log back in after that.

Jayne.9251:

You’d probably hate me then.

I spent a good month placing siege all over the place (100s of pieces of siege) when I returned and learned of the new fov angles.

Nah. I placed experimental siege, too, after the LOS nerf. Not a huge amount at one time/location (other than just before reset), but here and there, till I learned. I don’t want anything implemented that will punish legit siege builders, because I am one of them, and I appreciate that their work is important.

What’s with the obsession of placing names on siege? It’s not as if we don’t know who the siege trolls are. We do. It’s not as if we’re unable to video the trolls in action and report them. We can.

Who the trolls are and what they’re doing is common knowledge. The problem is that you can’t build an AI smart enough to recognize siege trolls and Anet is unwilling to spend resources to deal with them manually.

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! Put the name of who deployed the siege weapon on the siege weapon, no matter how long it lives their name should be on it.
Get a bunch of reports and bam, they cannot deploy siege (the entire account) for x amount of time… preferably in the 24h per infraction level. Anything less and frankly you aren’t actually going to cause any effect.

A new catch with the base game being free? Free accounts cannot deploy siege. Gotta buy the box. You solve another problem here.

Runiir.6425:

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! Put the name of who deployed the siege weapon on the siege weapon, no matter how long it lives their name should be on it.
Get a bunch of reports and bam, they cannot deploy siege (the entire account) for x amount of time… preferably in the 24h per infraction level. Anything less and frankly you aren’t actually going to cause any effect.

A new catch with the base game being free? Free accounts cannot deploy siege. Gotta buy the box. You solve another problem here.

Seems reasonable. I also don’t understand why an in-game poll couldn’t get someone banned from deploying siege for a few hours.

Lord Kuru.3685:

What’s with the obsession of placing names on siege? It’s not as if we don’t know who the siege trolls are. We do. It’s not as if we’re unable to video the trolls in action and report them. We can.

Who the trolls are and what they’re doing is common knowledge. The problem is that you can’t build an AI smart enough to recognize siege trolls and Anet is unwilling to spend resources to deal with them manually.

Well that and you get some poor new soul to WvW who accidentally puts down a bad placement and gets screamed at and then never comes into WvW again.

Heck, I purposefully put down odd placements to experiment with trajectories. Some of those experiments have yielded successful new placements. My server thankfully knows me, and lets me do this stuff, but someone new?

I did an experiment, and went to an NA server and started dropping siege in the newfound places I’d discovered that I knew were really effective and even offered to show my new teammates how great these placements were … result? A few “vets” on map started raging because it wasn’t in THE spot they’d used forever. Nothing I could do to explain that these new placements were fantastic would work. There was a stubborn, nope, we’ve always done it this way and I’m not listening to you lalalalala response. Was silly.

I did, however, find like-minded souls later on that server who were overjoyed with the new placements and told me to just ignore the blowhards

Just a good thing to do. Allow to the guild who claim something other people to build siege or to take supply in the structures.
Maybe add this with whitelist or blacklist.

Then the guild who claim something can choose that only member from that guild can use supply / build siege. Or define a blacklist of players or guild that can’t do that, or define a whitelist of players / guilds that can do that.

But to add this you have to add some ingame poll to force unclaim something, like at least 50% on the map players should agree with that, or more, don’t know.

I like the exhaustion system, but I think it can be more refined. Firstly a sharper penalty should come to those who throw 2 or more siege without expending ATLEAST 10 supply to build it(the premise is that if you plan to build siege you would’ve made a supply stop to do so). This debuff should be one that persists even if you log off then back on called “Siege Locked” across all characters on the account (you broke the rule in-game you should serve that time unto completion in-game). This debuff should last 5~10 minutes (or more at Anets discretion), which incurring this penalty in succession resulting in a longer Siege Locked debuff upto being indefinitely locked (the premise being that doing this multiple times on purpose this late in the game means you don’t really care to play the game mode correctly on a competitive level). The debuff exhaustion can occur for players who have thrown 3 localized siege that supply were put into by him or herself and surrounding players I.E roaming parties. This allows them to place the necessary siege with coordination between party members. Secondly only “legitimate commanders” meaning those people with atleast 5~10 (or 10+ at Anets discretion) active players on them should be immune to Exhaustion and Siege Locked debuffs.

Back in early Guild Wars 2 I believe commanders had an aura. Reinstate this aura giving the area around them in a range of 600~900 or more with an area of effect to deny siege placement from players around them since most commanders throw their own siege anyway. This will greatly reduce siege spamming in all areas in general of WvW and sharply around commanders.

To prevent the commander from running into the problem of running out of siege and not being able to have it thrown around them due to the aura here is an option.

Shared Siege Slots: Upon joining a commanders squad you can register siege from your inventory that ONLY the commander can throw. Since people donate siege to commanders anyway this allows the commander to still maintain his aura while having access to the siege of his squad if they register it. These slots can be located on the interface were players pick their wvw upgrades for their characters.

Those peoples wanting to rid themselves of the permanent Siege Locked can buy a one time forgiveness pass from the cash shop for a set price. If the penalty is incurred again it is a permanent debuff on the whole account.

I know it can seem like abrasive stuff however this system would achieve the desired result with minimum GM interference or maintenance.

The simplest solution to “wrong siege” stuff would be just give commanders the ability to select a siege emplacement or build site and use a “Hide Owner’s Build Sites” option that would hide all build sites from whoever dropped it for them and anyone else in the squad.

That wouldn’t interfere with build site drops by legitimate players regardless of whether they’re in squad or party or whatever else, wouldn’t be foiled by trolls joining the squad, and wouldn’t really be abusable.

Please dont change anything on something thats already good.

There will always be trolls. If you change something and have a change to break it. Trolls will find something else.

KashimKudal.2961:

I like the exhaustion system, but I think it can be more refined. Firstly a sharper penalty should come to those who throw 2 or more siege without expending ATLEAST 10 supply to build it(the premise is that if you plan to build siege you would’ve made a supply stop to do so). This debuff should be one that persists even if you log off then back on called “Siege Locked” across all characters on the account (you broke the rule in-game you should serve that time unto completion in-game). This debuff should last 5~10 minutes (or more at Anets discretion), which incurring this penalty in succession resulting in a longer Siege Locked

---

I know it can seem like abrasive stuff however this system would achieve the desired result with minimum GM interference or maintenance.

This idea for example. You put down a siege, you get killed before you can build and on top you get a penalty. Would result in frustrating situations

THIS! Put the name of who deployed the siege weapon on the siege weapon, no matter how long it lives their name should be on it.
Get a bunch of reports and bam, they cannot deploy siege (the entire account) for x amount of time… preferably in the 24h per infraction level. Anything less and frankly you aren’t actually going to cause any effect.

A new catch with the base game being free? Free accounts cannot deploy siege. Gotta buy the box. You solve another problem here.

Or this when trolls start random reporting. Just leave siege as it is and focus on new stuff. This is more badly needed. Most WvW players are enjoying again after the last patch

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