Guild Wars 2

So I came across something very interesting today in WvW…

My story begins here…

Today I saw a fellow JQ player moving an Omega golem around JQ keep in EBG.
He was moving it from the Lords room to the edge of the outer wall while damaging it constantly.
So I thought… maybe he’s new and is stuck and doesn’t know how to get out (it happens).
As I approached him to talk to him, he gets out immediately and runs off.
And starts escorting the nearby dolyak caravan passing by Langor and JQ Keep.
I thought… hmmmm a bit odd.

So I blocked him, checked his AP, only 886. Obviously new to WvW.
I thought… why don’t I follow him and help him out in case he needs a hand.

And so I tag him and start following him discreetly.
He escorts the dolyaks for less than 1 minute, and then he waypoints right back into JQ Keep.
And runs straight to the tactivators and turns on the Emergency Waypoint.
JQ keep was empty – no one else was standing near the tactivators.
No enemy in sight.

So I start to type in Team Chat – to admonish him and let the others know.
But before I could finish typing, he takes off again, so I stop typing to follow him.

He goes directly to Bravost, and triggers the Emergency Waypoint there too.
All this while I am standing right there behind him.
This happened today around 6PM (Monday night, GMT+8 ).

Anyway, so I start typing (or ranting) on Team Chat (you can imagine my non-too-polite posts).
Literally just 5 posts/rants later, the DB zerg hits Langor.
I’ll let you decide whether that was coincidence or not.

And here my story ends…

But I have question.
In the heat of that moment, I had reported him for botting.
But upon consideration, I’m not so sure if there is anything wrong with what he did.
After all, he wasn’t exploiting a glitch or anything like that.
And as far as I could tell, he was just playing the game, and using the game mechanics as they were intended to be used.
Though perhaps in rather wilfully unwise manner.

So… can a dev or someone knowledgeable in this area confirm if this sort of action is:
1. In breach of the Arenanet/GW2 EULA.
2. Something frowned upon but not really disallowed.
3. Fine as it is, i.e. L2P. This sort of thing happens in real life, and MMOs are meant to be a simulation of that. Learn to deal with it.
4. To be actively encouraged. After all, when I calmed down, I realised it was quite fun to catch and expose him. It felt like an episode of NCIS: Guild Wars 2. Plus it was most interesting to see what lengths people would go to win a game with no prize.

Tactivator abuse is a problem that’s going on in every server, and unfortunately there isn’t a good way to prevent abuse right now aside from disabling public use which is not an ideal solution.

What you describe is unfortunate behavior, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that player was spying, some people are just trolls and this is what they do because they have no life. Emergency waypoints and other buffs can be seen by enemies, and when the wp is pulled it pops an icon on the map which can be seen by anyone. Having an enemy zerg hit your tower doesnt mean they are coordinating with a spy.

I suggested a few weeks ago that certain tactivators like chilling fog, airship, emergency waypoint etc only be usable if there are enemies attacking the structure. So who knows what will happen.

If it’s a Troll player…I’d suggest that ANet use a Dishonor Flag Mechanic to stop players like this from ruining the game.

PART III – Expanded Details of Major Mechanics & Triggers v.41

e) Anti-Trolling, Buffs, & Counter-Weights

Not Implemented
…Anti-Troll – WvW Dishonor Flag
……1) Let the WvW community of players flag the player(s) they think are Trolls.
……2) Put limitations on how this flag is applied to prevent abuse.
……3) Then decide on what the Dishonor flag does to these Trolls.

There needs to be punishment for spy/troll accounts in WvW. Though the only way to stop the spy accounts is IP banning till they use a proxies or change how free accounts work in WvW.

Diku.2546:

If it’s a Troll player…I’d suggest that ANet use a Dishonor Flag Mechanic to stop players like this from ruining the game.

---

PART III – Expanded Details of Major Mechanics & Triggers v.41

e) Anti-Trolling, Buffs, & Counter-Weights

Not Implemented
…Anti-Troll – WvW Dishonor Flag
……1) Let the WvW community of players flag the player(s) they think are Trolls.
……2) Put limitations on how this flag is applied to prevent abuse.
……3) Then decide on what the Dishonor flag does to these Trolls.

Too easy to abuse, sadly.

Ask Maguuma about War Machine.

Heh.

To the OP. Very glad your first thought was new player. Very glad you followed to help.

That’s the easiest way to determine spies.

Next time take a video, document time, server, place, and submit a support ticket. Your paper trail initiates an investigation, and if this guy does it every time he logs in, he’ll get banned. Ofc he can just make another free account, but it’ll cost him —- time or money to level up and get access to wvw — and if he gets banned each time… It’ll get old.

But do submit full documentation to back up your ticket.

It’ll go down like this:

First Anet cannot control how a player plays and so they cant do anything about it.
Second enough people complain and it becomes a bannable offense.
Third, player just creates another free account, levels it up and is back on your BL flipping switches.
This is what happens when you have an open free for all style gamemode.

End of the day get over it, it’s annoying as kitten but then so are all those 12 year olds on Xbox live shouting abuse at you, but you dont see them being banned.

Banning a player for playing a game they want to is also wrong, they paid for the game same as you.

Like do you think germans are gonna ask anet to ban all other players who like to fight instead of pvd cos it’s ruining their fun and karma train?
Or the players who like fights being banned cos roamers want small scale fights instead of zerg fights?
Or guilds to ban pugs for running into a guild raid when the guild doesnt want them there?

There are things people hate in games, and those that actually like the things others hate. In the end what can you really do?

@Jayne

Off the top of my head…perhaps the following would prevent abuse:

……1) Let the WvW community of players flag the player(s) they think are Trolls.

……2) Put limitations on how this flag is applied to prevent abuse.

…………a) Require a minimum of 10 Votes to enable a Player’s WvW Dishonor Flag
…………b) Each Vote must come from a different Account – but it’s a hidden rule
…………c) Each Vote must come from a different IP address – but it’s a hidden rule
…………d) All Accounts can only Vote 1-3 per day
…………e) ANet can review Report(ed) Dishonor Flag Transaction History of Accounts
…………f) ANet can review Report(ing) Dishonor Flag Transaction History of Accounts
…………g) ANet has the ability to override a Player’s Dishonor Flag & Punish Abusers
…………h) Players can request an override to their Dishonor Flag

……3) Then decide on what the Dishonor flag does to these Trolls.

Diku.2546:

@Jayne

Off the top of my head…perhaps the following would prevent abuse:

……1) Let the WvW community of players flag the player(s) they think are Trolls.

……2) Put limitations on how this flag is applied to prevent abuse.

…………a) Require a minimum of 10 Votes to enable a Player’s WvW Dishonor Flag
…………b) Each Vote must come from a different Account – but it’s a hidden rule
…………c) Each Vote must come from a different IP address – but it’s a hidden rule
…………d) All Accounts can only Vote 1-3 per day
…………e) ANet has the ability to review Dishonor Flag Transaction History of Accounts
…………f) ANet has the ability to override a Player’s Dishonor Flag & Punish Abusers

……3) Then decide on what the Dishonor flag does to these Trolls.

Lol Mags will be overjoyed.

Sadly people cheat. I see this all the time on TC, and it isn’t always black gate that comes storming on up either. I’ve seen it also happen to other servers as well.

I wish they would put in report section for “gaming the wvw system” and that is exactly what this is. I honestly think these people won’t learn unless they are given a good timeout from wvw.

What needs to be done is if an account is found guilty; all accounts tied to offenders: IP address, MAC address and the router’s MAC address need to be locked out of wvw for x amount of time, that increases exponentially based on the number of offenses. That way the main account is punished, as well as all the other “smurf accounts” and any new accounts they attempt to make. If they did that people would either stop or remove them selves from wvw.

I have been on a few servers and this type of thing happened to all of them (back before tactivators it was wasting keep supply on useless rams, taking golems out to die, etc). I am certain some of it was not spying, but just ill-meaning trolls. Two of the servers I have been on though definitely seemed to be victims of spies, as enemy groups moved around according to where pins were (and occasionally were misled by fake pins).

I assume it takes too much effort on ANet’s part to investigate something like this, so they do not bother. With the tactivators, though, we have something that should be easier to quickly check. Perhaps ANet can start doing something specifically about those.

People who make spy accounts need to punished heavily.. not only on their spy account but also punish their main accounts.
Also absolutely HAVE to remove the ability from free accounts to pull tactivators…

Im on SoS and our EBG keep Ewaypoint is on CD 24/7… also we had like 5 ballis right next to the supply depot just as well as random rams all over inner.. clearly someone burning supply…

Again, This needs to be addressed asap and with severity.

Yep, SoS was hit very hard tonight by spies, and hard to tell which server they came from as both teamed up to leave us just our keep on EBG and a couple towers/camps on our BL, but not our garrison.

Sylvyn.4750:

Yep, SoS was hit very hard tonight by spies, and hard to tell which server they came from as both teamed up to leave us just our keep on EBG and a couple towers/camps on our BL, but not our garrison.

They took the keep a bit later, after building an armada of rams and misc siege around supply hut and other weird places + keeping the tacs on cooldown in between pushes. No supply, no tacs, siege cap, outnumbered 3 to 1. gg

We on Whiteside of Fire have had this happening as well except it’s been in garri or our EB keep and guess what? The Dz blob shows up almost a minute after the emergency waypoint, chilling fog and invulnerable fortifications were used. Such a surprise.

The worst part is they had a lot more than us, talking double or triple what we had, so don’t even need to do stuff like this.

Then you have the special people who end up activating all the tactivators when trying to get a centaur banner, or the guy who despite me naming him and asking him in say, team, map and whisper to stop placing arrow carts and use superiors still ignores it.

apharma.3741:

We on Whiteside of Fire have had this happening as well except it’s been in garri or our EB keep and guess what? The Dz blob shows up almost a minute after the emergency waypoint, chilling fog and invulnerable fortifications were used. Such a surprise.

The worst part is they had a lot more than us, talking double or triple what we had, so don’t even need to do stuff like this.

Then you have the special people who end up activating all the tactivators when trying to get a centaur banner, or the guy who despite me naming him and asking him in say, team, map and whisper to stop placing arrow carts and use superiors still ignores it.

Cheers mate, i am from drakkar sound, we are currently, or again.. In the same matchup. If this behavior occurs Please wsp or mail me the ACC Name of said account, and if existant the guild Name. I will give this information to the commanders.
We do not support this abuse.
Sadly we had the same fun happening several times at SM and are still unable to determine the source.

Literally same thing happened to us today..
We were running around our BL after losing pretty much all, trying to defend what is still T3… when a big SBI zerg came to our T3 NET.. and of course our Ewaypoint in that tower was already on a 28min cooldown. Talk about coincidence…

Silberfederling.9302:

apharma.3741:

We on Whiteside of Fire have had this happening as well except it’s been in garri or our EB keep and guess what? The Dz blob shows up almost a minute after the emergency waypoint, chilling fog and invulnerable fortifications were used. Such a surprise.

The worst part is they had a lot more than us, talking double or triple what we had, so don’t even need to do stuff like this.

Then you have the special people who end up activating all the tactivators when trying to get a centaur banner, or the guy who despite me naming him and asking him in say, team, map and whisper to stop placing arrow carts and use superiors still ignores it.

Cheers mate, i am from drakkar sound, we are currently, or again.. In the same matchup. If this behavior occurs Please wsp or mail me the ACC Name of said account, and if existant the guild Name. I will give this information to the commanders.
We do not support this abuse.
Sadly we had the same fun happening several times at SM and are still unable to determine the source.

Sadly we have no idea who kept doing it but since we’ve been in the match up vs you and Viz it hasn’t happened as far as I can see.

P.S. Pls karma train Viz more =D

Yeah, the Problem right now is that most commanders lean back fight now, so you have New guys running where the zerg wants to, that being the easy way, with less defenders. Might have seen my guild yesterday, we were the guys charging your home keep for 2 and a half hours, comm insisted on: takeing that bloody thing down (paraphrase).
All in all i would love to see more of you guys, may be even for gvg, as we are just rebuilding out guild and have to learn a loooot.
Edit: my phone hates me

Silberfederling.9302:

Yeah, the Problem right now is that most commanders lean back fight now, so you have New guys running where the zerg wants to, that being the easy way, with less defenders. Might have seen my guild yesterday, we were the guys charging your home keep for 2 and a half hours, comm insisted on: takeing that bloody thing down (paraphrase).
All in all i would love to see more of you guys, may be even for gvg, as we are just rebuilding out guild and have to learn a loooot.
Edit: my phone hates me

Understandable, people get a moral boost from capping stuff but generally worn out by not taking things. You guys did well with the catas on the first try, thought we’d lose it eventually with Viz attacking from the other side but we managed to hold. Lost everything else on the map but I made sure we had lots of siege pre built so we wouldn’t lose supply building arrow carts.

You mostly fought roamers as most of our guilds weren’t raiding that night. If you’ve ever fought ONE then we’ve fought each other. Not so bad in prime time when our guilds are going but until then both RoF and WSR haven’t got the numbers you have.

Yes i noticed that as well. Kudos to those roamers though, we now have a traumatized necro XD.
Look mate once i am home i’ll add you maybe we can scrim some time.

Back on topic though:
The Problem with locking access to the tactivators is, that not many guilds have the coverage for 24\7 observation of those.
Every try to, for instance make it rank based or based of time spend on the Server is going to exclude New players, and right now i am glad that we have New people poking their noses into the mists.
I can’t see a solution to this, at least none that would be fair. It is bloody annoying how ever.

Why can’t a failsafe system be implemented whereby the only way you can pull one of the tactvators is if you have a tag up at the time? Even if it’s a brief tag pop, someone surely will see the name and if something goes wrong then you’d know who did it.

Spying has been around for thousands of years in real life. Spying in games has been around as long as the games have been around. When did it become against any rule to spy on the enemy?

I’ve wondered before on TC if this is why over time we stopped seeing as many golems in keeps. For years we had trolls who would suicide any golems left behind, turn siege the wrong way, waste supply – you get the idea. Not spies to my knowledge. Just people who wanted to be a pain in the kitten . I can’t even imagine how on earth that would be considered fun.

Spying is tough. There aren’t many methods of punishment we could enact in game that won’t be abused by someone. Many matchups have a huge population imbalance which makes that sort of behavior more than a little ridiculous.

This happens on DH almost evey night during NA prime. No exaggeration. Sadly, I’m pretty used to it and come to expect it when the voltron blob is about to hit a keep. We all knew it was going to get out of hand with the implementation of ftp. Spies I’m not all upset about, it’s the pulling of tacs and supply wasting that brings a new meaning to tryhard scrubbery. It’s especially lame to do when you vastly outnumber the server you’re doing it to at that moment. It’s admitting you suck tbh.

I’ve seen some great ideas to stop it or at least help the situation. This is definitely a case to have recording software at the ready. Cause we all know the report system goes to the bin. 3 yrs and no report cheater option in drop-down menu.

Remake this thread on Reddit, it might get seen….

PyrateSilly.4710:

Spying has been around for thousands of years in real life. Spying in games has been around as long as the games have been around. When did it become against any rule to spy on the enemy?

Spying is a bit different. If you’re breaking golems, burning sup, capping out siege with useless siege placements, pulling all the tacs just to keep them on cooldown for incoming hostiles, spamming map chat to gloat, it’s more than just spying and there is no real counterplay.

Now if we could mark the troll account as hostile that would be great. Whatever mechanic responsible for that would need to be carefully crafted though.

Diku.2546:

@Jayne

Off the top of my head…perhaps the following would prevent abuse:

……1) Let the WvW community of players flag the player(s) they think are Trolls.

……2) Put limitations on how this flag is applied to prevent abuse.

…………a) Require a minimum of 10 Votes to enable a Player’s WvW Dishonor Flag
…………b) Each Vote must come from a different Account – but it’s a hidden rule
…………c) Each Vote must come from a different IP address – but it’s a hidden rule
…………d) All Accounts can only Vote 1-3 per day
…………e) ANet can review Report(ed) Dishonor Flag Transaction History of Accounts
…………f) ANet can review Report(ing) Dishonor Flag Transaction History of Accounts
…………g) ANet has the ability to override a Player’s Dishonor Flag & Punish Abusers
…………h) Players can request an override to their Dishonor Flag

……3) Then decide on what the Dishonor flag does to these Trolls.

Ya know this will only lead to more trolling?

Kay well I wouldn’t jump to conclusions:

-You started stalking them around the map in an obviously noticeably way (I can think of many many better ways to damage/destroy golemns than what u described)
-maybe they accidentally pulled the first emergency wp
-maybe after you scolded them they got angry and did it to the others out of hate/amusement.
-maybe the enemy zerg showing up was simply coincidence, or maybe they showed up BECAUSE their scouts noticed the wp was pulled all of a sudden and wasted.

It’s not really fair to scold people for the tactivators….if I was new I would think it beyond stupid that people could get so angry over the touching of something so easy to accidentally click on. I mean dang son, its an mmorpg and its gw2….if ur not clicking everything you get an icon for in pve you aren’t doing the game right. The fact that doesn’t translate over to wvsw for something so important is a bit hard to grasp.

1. This happens on all servers. I witnessed it on BG/ET last night as well and I barely play on that particular account. Spying, supply burning, golem suiciding, tactivator pulling: All. Servers.
2. Any sort of “Dishonor Flag” will be abused to no end so this can’t be an option.
3. Set the tactivators to private. When you or your guild leave the map, hand over the claim to another guild who can keep an eye on it. When they leave, they’ll hand it over to another guild too. Coordination is key, just like it’s always been in WvW.

Wow. I didn’t expect the problem to be so prevalent.
I guess despite the title – most people (and myself) are not so much concerned about the spying per se. But rather the brazen and unstoppable sabotage that goes on.

And I agree with Offair, that a dishonour system would probably encourage trollers rather than discourage them. From what I’ve experienced, trollers usually like to troll with an audience. After all, if no listens/cares – what is the trolling achieving?

And seeing as there is no reply from Arenanet, my guess is that such behaviour isn’t actually against the EULA. So probably not much they can do about it even if you caught the saboteur red-handed.

So perhaps it would be better if Arenanet could instead give guilds a means to control/audit/police the use of their tactivators.

For instance:
Have a log (like the guild bank) – of everyone who used which tactivator, and when/what date/time. Abusers would no doubt show up regularly.
Let this log be freely visible to all – so others can report any abuse to the claiming guild.

Let the claiming guild be able to ban/allow any person (like block/friend) from using their tactivators – that way trusted commanders in other guilds/roamers/scouts can use them, while reported abusers will be locked out.

And let the claiming guild also be able to set limits and/or minimum requirements for non-guild members to use their tactivators, i.e.
A flag to allow/stop Free Accounts.
Minimum AP points.
Minimum WvW rank.

Something like that I think will drastically reduce the amount of sabotage/abuse/trolling – whatever the motivation.

Also regarding supply abuse…
Perhaps allow guilds to put a supply/time limit on Supply usage (on keeps/garrison only – not supply camps).
For instance, allow limits which are triggered by the supply level.
i.e.
> 800 => no limits
500-800 => 100 supply per person per 10/X mins
0-500 => 50 supply per person per 10/X mins

And again, allow the claiming guild to allow/ban anyone from using any amount of supply. And/or alternatively place minimums that if people meet – will have no limits. i.e.
WvW rank > 1000 – no limit
AP > 10000 – no limit.

This will allow known siege builders the ability to siege up a place without hindrance.

Silberfederling.9302:

Yes i noticed that as well. Kudos to those roamers though, we now have a traumatized necro XD.
Look mate once i am home i’ll add you maybe we can scrim some time.

Back on topic though:
The Problem with locking access to the tactivators is, that not many guilds have the coverage for 24\7 observation of those.
Every try to, for instance make it rank based or based of time spend on the Server is going to exclude New players, and right now i am glad that we have New people poking their noses into the mists.
I can’t see a solution to this, at least none that would be fair. It is bloody annoying how ever.

Simply lock free accounts out of using tactivators? That way someone would have to pay if they want to make a spy account on your server and burn your tactivators before their server attacks. Free accounts already have similar restrictions in pve, no reason to not do the same here.

OriOri.8724:

Silberfederling.9302:

Yes i noticed that as well. Kudos to those roamers though, we now have a traumatized necro XD.
Look mate once i am home i’ll add you maybe we can scrim some time.

Back on topic though:
The Problem with locking access to the tactivators is, that not many guilds have the coverage for 24\7 observation of those.
Every try to, for instance make it rank based or based of time spend on the Server is going to exclude New players, and right now i am glad that we have New people poking their noses into the mists.
I can’t see a solution to this, at least none that would be fair. It is bloody annoying how ever.

Simply lock free accounts out of using tactivators? That way someone would have to pay if they want to make a spy account on your server and burn your tactivators before their server attacks. Free accounts already have similar restrictions in pve, no reason to not do the same here.

There are plenty of $10 sale accounts around. This would only put the tiniest dent in spying.

As the owner of 2 $10 accounts (that I upgraded to HOT), I find that insinuation insulting. Those sales happened way before HOT, tactvators and merging. It’s true, most sales accounts probably don’t see the wvw light of day much and they do hop servers often (that’s part of why they were offered to begin with), but it doesn’t mean they or all FTP accounts should automatically be labeled spy accounts and it doesn’t mean those people are the only ones abusing the system.

HazyDaisy.4107:

As the owner of 2 $10 accounts (that I upgraded to HOT), I find that insinuation insulting. Those sales happened way before HOT, tactvators and merging. It’s true, most sales accounts probably don’t see the wvw light of day much and they do hop servers often (that’s part of why they were offered to begin with), but it doesn’t mean they or all FTP accounts should automatically be labeled spy accounts and it doesn’t mean those people are the only ones abusing the system.

There is no insinuation. Whatever you infer is up to you.

Blocking free-to-play accounts from Action X (where Action X) is something people use to grief their purported team in WvW will not do much to deter griefing — because griefers can easily get ahold of accounts bought on $10 sales (to mention only ANet-approved means of getting a paid-up account).

The implication runs the other way, e.g. Griefers have multiple cheap accounts, not that people with multiple accounts (even if on different servers) are griefers.

If ANet cares about WvW griefing, then it should monitor player behavior and block/ban associated accounts (i.e. main and alt accounts belonging to one player). There are no alternatives.

Just add a wvw rank line – 1 tier – tactivator use – 300 pts to max, with a log that shows who did what and be done with it.

You can’t IP ban. Too many households with 1 shared computer. Should Daddy get banned because little Billy took a stroll in an omega? Should the GF get banned because her BF tripped over a tactivator?

HazyDaisy.4107:

You can’t IP ban. Too many households with 1 shared computer. Should Daddy get banned because little Billy took a stroll in an omega? Should the GF get banned because her BF tripped over a tactivator?

Who mentioned IP banning? Honestly you’re getting straw everywhere.

“took a stroll in an omega” “tripped on a tactivator”

Those aren’t the lines that marks a golem/siege griefer and I think you know it.

If an account trashes 10 omegas in a row and it looks like the accounts probably belong to the same person, then yes, the group of accounts should be subject to discipline. Similarly if it hops from objective to objective tactivating in non-sensical ways.

Detecting, investigating, and acting on this information would require ANet to invest effort into improving WvW for legitimate players, but there’s no point to pre-emptively wringing your hands over false positives.

Hennet.1530:

There needs to be punishment for spy/troll accounts in WvW. Though the only way to stop the spy accounts is IP banning till they use a proxies or change how free accounts work in WvW.

^^^

deExile.6835:

So I came across something very interesting today in WvW…

My story begins here…

Today I saw a fellow JQ player moving an Omega golem around JQ keep in EBG.
He was moving it from the Lords room to the edge of the outer wall while damaging it constantly.
So I thought… maybe he’s new and is stuck and doesn’t know how to get out (it happens).
As I approached him to talk to him, he gets out immediately and runs off.
And starts escorting the nearby dolyak caravan passing by Langor and JQ Keep.
I thought… hmmmm a bit odd.

So I blocked him, checked his AP, only 886. Obviously new to WvW.
I thought… why don’t I follow him and help him out in case he needs a hand.

And so I tag him and start following him discreetly.
He escorts the dolyaks for less than 1 minute, and then he waypoints right back into JQ Keep.
And runs straight to the tactivators and turns on the Emergency Waypoint.
JQ keep was empty – no one else was standing near the tactivators.
No enemy in sight.

So I start to type in Team Chat – to admonish him and let the others know.
But before I could finish typing, he takes off again, so I stop typing to follow him.

He goes directly to Bravost, and triggers the Emergency Waypoint there too.
All this while I am standing right there behind him.
This happened today around 6PM (Monday night, GMT+8 ).

Anyway, so I start typing (or ranting) on Team Chat (you can imagine my non-too-polite posts).
Literally just 5 posts/rants later, the DB zerg hits Langor.
I’ll let you decide whether that was coincidence or not.

And here my story ends…

But I have question.
In the heat of that moment, I had reported him for botting.
But upon consideration, I’m not so sure if there is anything wrong with what he did.
After all, he wasn’t exploiting a glitch or anything like that.
And as far as I could tell, he was just playing the game, and using the game mechanics as they were intended to be used.
Though perhaps in rather wilfully unwise manner.

So… can a dev or someone knowledgeable in this area confirm if this sort of action is:
1. In breach of the Arenanet/GW2 EULA.
2. Something frowned upon but not really disallowed.
3. Fine as it is, i.e. L2P. This sort of thing happens in real life, and MMOs are meant to be a simulation of that. Learn to deal with it.
4. To be actively encouraged. After all, when I calmed down, I realised it was quite fun to catch and expose him. It felt like an episode of NCIS: Guild Wars 2. Plus it was most interesting to see what lengths people would go to win a game with no prize.

Yak’s Bend is going through the same thing with our own person who does exactly this – several of them.

It seems to me the EULA doesn’t matter.

X T D.6458:

Tactivator abuse is a problem that’s going on in every server, and unfortunately there isn’t a good way to prevent abuse right now aside from disabling public use which is not an ideal solution.

What you describe is unfortunate behavior, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that player was spying, some people are just trolls and this is what they do because they have no life. Emergency waypoints and other buffs can be seen by enemies, and when the wp is pulled it pops an icon on the map which can be seen by anyone. Having an enemy zerg hit your tower doesnt mean they are coordinating with a spy.

I suggested a few weeks ago that certain tactivators like chilling fog, airship, emergency waypoint etc only be usable if there are enemies attacking the structure. So who knows what will happen.

You nailed the problem.

We can’t pick and choose who gets access to the activators – if we did, like a real facility, we’d not have even a tenth of the spying that we have now.

Unfortunately all servers have spys/ trolls that love to pull those tactivators.

Obama & Trump – Pull My Finger

i had a weird experience the other day. our commander caught a spy in comms, booted him, and at the same time my game froze up. stupid win10 couldnt close the program.

I think we’ve asked for additional reporting options for quite some time now for reporting purposes. Botting just doesn’t seem to cover it, or do it.

We need one for griefing and one for exploits.

WvW Commander Abilities:
– can disable trolls’ ability to make/use siege/golems
– can ban confirmed spies from their server’s WvW environment
– can organize all server by having a chat that is visible on all maps

Pre-requisite for Commandership:
– voted by no less than 100 non-free account at the beginning of month
– server can have up to 10 Coms.
– authority will end at end of month, and cycle of voting begins again

benefits:
– no more waiting for Anet response for players
– no more additional work for Anet with regards to trolls so they could focus on actual game

Cons: TBD

I could dream

Official word on siege trolls (spies used to cap an area’s siege by placing useless siege inside important structures) is to report them via the bot report option. I imagine that this is applicable for tactivator trolls.

Strict spying is hard to manage as often communication to enemies occurs out-of-game via TS and the likes. I don’t know ANet’s official report stance on this. That said, wasteful tactivator pulls are something they can track and will have the logs for doing, so it’s not just wasted report space.

A WvW troll flag would be nice, though. Dishonorable play is hard to have on this level, though, since people will use that feature to try and ban people who jump on corpses and whatnot, which while a really rude thing to do, isn’t ban-worthy or anything, and would flood support rather than just passing through really bad stuff.

DeceiverX.8361:

Official word on siege trolls (spies used to cap an area’s siege by placing useless siege inside important structures) is to report them via the bot report option.

What if they used all your supply to build siege on top of the boat floating on the water in Bay? There was a golem, treb, cata and arrow cart all on the boat, and none of it usable (though I didn’t try the golem…hmm). Though they didn’t block anything important, later on that lack of supply really hurt us and we lost Bay. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a name, but we are pretty certain of the server…

Siege on the boat has historically been usable and has also been done since it can reach further areas of the keep while not being able to be hit by the outer edges of large ground-target skills since it’s in the water. Though I’ve not tried to use any such siege since before ABL was brought back, so if it’s changed/bugged/whatever I can’t tell you.

Dont let trial account play WvW easy fix,they should only have access to ETOM and unranked sPvP as there is way so eaxy to abuse stuff with accounts that dont fear the ban hammer.

Trial accounts have to level up to what? 60? in order to get into WvW?

That’s a lot of time/money/effort if your free account keeps getting banned.

The problem is having definitive proof that someone is spying (ie. they say so in map chat, or you can document every time they log in, they troll, etc.), you can’t just ban someone because so-and-so says he/she is spying.

However, if every time you JUST got that toon levelled up to 60 and got banned, I suspect this would go a ways to preventing this kind of behaviour. Eventually the “spy” is going to run out of funds if they’re craft-levelling, or get fed up with the time needed to level up.

Then again, they could just learn to be quieter about it and less blatant.

I honestly don’t mind spies as much (no, I don’t do it personally, and don’t condone it for friends/guildies), it creates an interesting side of the game to play against. The only issue for me, is there’s no way to counter it really, even if you discover the spy, there’s not much you can do.
Like, in a real life situation, people could basically ignore the spy, or make it so that it’s more difficult for them to do.
But in a game, us ignoring them would actually make their jobs easier lol.
I like the idea of commanders being able to mark spies, but that can easily get abused or misused. And if a commander logs, is that mark removed? Will new commanders have to mark spies themselves?
I mean, how nice would it be if we were able to “jail” people lol. Something easier to do with a boardgame.