Guild Wars 2

Here to discuss if Spying is viable and worth the time:

Pros to Spying:

• Take up a server slot (if map has a que)
• Know location of enemy zerg (if they are pinned up)
• Can waste supply building useless siege
• Can turn trebuchets away from their intended aim location
• Can ‘kill’ golems by jumping off cliffs or running to enemy server
• Affect server population calculation (server transfer)

Cons to Spying:

• Player is not playing on ‘home’ server
• Can no longer drain supply fast by ordering upgrades (after expansion)
• No reward other than server gaining advantage (gold, karma, badges)
• Have to make new account if playing different servers each week (unless you already have)
• Have to level to 60 before spying without access some faster methods (tomes, crafting)

Summary:

Other than on servers where population is higher spying is next to useless, and even on higher servers there isn’t much a spy can do that can’t be prevented other than taking up space and burning supply slowly. Also the servers where population would matter are locked (due to being full) they can’t get spies. I think we might see some spies pop up for a while before people realize they are better off playing on their server then trying to ‘spy’ on another.

EDIT

Just adding some more that people have put in this thread:

Pros:

• Player can afk on seige to block it
• Lots of servers give teamspeak acces to any account on a WvW map
• Insite riot in map chat
• Offensive fake seige to drain supply

Cons:

• If spying becomes more common some tactics are ‘counterable’

Yea, I guess with the whole using a second computer or just hopping in enemy teamspeak prevents the not playing on home server con. I do believe this makes spies, in all their forms, more viable but still rather un-rewarding and not much gained for relatively little effort. As people have pointed out many of the pro’s can be ‘countered’ such has turning pin off on map, more requirements to joining ts, players getting use to reading before dumping supply on offense, and ignoring/blocking people trying to start riot’s in map chat.

Edit:

Pros:

• Can waste objectives tactic(active) ability if set for public use

For discussion of the spying options in the f2p context, see here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Free-Base-Game-and-WvW

I think that spies would be pretty innocuous if 3 things were done:

1. f2p cannot see commander tags in wvw.

2. f2p cannot use a golem they did not start themselves,

3. f2p cannot read team chat.

Spies can also sit on siege during an attack preventing you from using it for defense.
They can give false call outs in team chat like, “garri is just a tap”
It in no way prevents you from playing on your own server, many people own more than 1 computer.
They can siege lock an area with useless siege

Spies can also demoralize the map by negatively commenting on a commander until A: commander gets fed up and logs; B: players start to believe the spy and abandon commander; C: people start to fight back in map chat and cause a big toxic mess that makes people log out.

Thy can also troll commanders and waste supply by throwing bali sites over the commanders ram sites when trying to take a structure

Something a guildmate wrote that is extremely useful to this discussion:
=============

Not everything you see is mere spying. Let’s break it down.

Spy {specifically gathering intel

We know it’s done by many servers, but consider that spying is basically just gathering and reporting intel. So someone has an account on another server, we can presume that they are seen as a ‘friendly’ to that server and they report position or intent to our server. Or vice versa.

Saboteur {specifically damaging stuff

This is commonly your siege troll. Someone who throws down inappropriate build sites [or too many] in front of inexperienced or distracted players in order to waste supply. They walk golems off edges, build ridiculous numbers of balli’s inside keeps to deny upgrades or repairs. But it isn’t limited to siege trolls, some can put down portals that send people off cliffs, lead militia in to a choke or other obviously deadly situation.

Agent Provocateur {specifically misleading players, creating drama or convincing some to do unwise things.

This is incredibly effective but requires a higher level of skill, unless you do it unwittingly.

The skilled AP must be patient and create a reputation and relationship with their target. Personally I can’t imagine doing that in a game and finding it not tedious work. However some people find it to be rewarding.

What most players don’t understand is that they can be unwitting or de-facto agent provocateurs when they instigate drama only for drama’s sake. Sometimes conflict arises legitimately as people storm together for a cause, however sometimes people intentionally troll purely for the glee of experiencing drama. They might also be wholly uncomfortable with another player who they have unresolved issues with and therefore (consciously or unconsciously) have less than constructive communication whenever this player is involved. When someone does either of the above, what they’re doing is deep-sixing the morale of the server to the benefit of our opponents.

We can’t root out the AP merely by suspecting that someone is such because they create drama. This actually is more destructive as the paranoia creates a bigger, more toxic and tedious specter than any effort by even the best AP’s.

Instead we can look at the wisdom of our actions, especially when someone asks us to join in.

Remember, it’s just a game, but it’s a group game and success depends on the group’s success.
======
My own opinion about each:

Spying, the passing of information, is in my opinion a complete waste of time. The game gives plenty of feedback and the ability to read that feedback and predict enemy movement is one of the aspects I measure a WvW commander by. Spies are only saving a few seconds time.

Saboteurs are not necessarily from opposing servers. They can be your servermates since release. These are the really damaging types of actions.

Agent Provocateurs are also not necessarily from opposing servers. You’ve all had experience with that one guy who becomes known as a negative nancy on your server. Many GvG guilds and players that tour other servers can fall under the class of unintentional Agent Provocateurs.

I think this whole spy thing is funny. Its like people want to PvD without being seen to avoid fights yet a good scout will call your movements just as well.

I’ve yet to see a spy.. Not saying they are not around but people are acting like spies will now take over this game mode.

Hey if you want to sit on your spy account and contribute nothing to your server besides spying then be my guest.

There will always be trolls no matter what and honestly I have seen them. Yes they are annoying but when they siege cap or waste all the supply they seem to leave. It doesn’t happen 24/7 as far as I can see but reading here it seems like it does.

Also I can really only speak for my server and what I’ve seen.. I’m sure in more populated ones it happens more then it does for us in the lower tiers.

Jayne.9251:

Spies can also demoralize the map by negatively commenting on a commander until A: commander gets fed up and logs; B: players start to believe the spy and abandon commander; C: people start to fight back in map chat and cause a big toxic mess that makes people log out.

That’s agent provocateur. Many players who criticize commanders on their own servers are unintentional agents provocateur.

briggah.7910:

Hey if you want to sit on your spy account and contribute nothing to your server besides spying then be my guest.

How hard is it to set up an old laptop next to your main computer and watch map chat and the commander tag while playing on your main computer?

Jayne.9251:

Spies can also demoralize the map by negatively commenting on a commander until A: commander gets fed up and logs; B: players start to believe the spy and abandon commander; C: people start to fight back in map chat and cause a big toxic mess that makes people log out.

People do this already and they are not even spies. I didn’t start to command on my server till I was rank 400+ and I was also in a PVE guild.. It was more a casual guild then anything but I will say I got a lot of heat from some people who were mainly from WvW guilds.

Before multiple color tags if you over tagged someone people wanted your head on a platter. I never over tagged people but people did it to me a zillion times. Most that did it to me were from WvW guilds. They would even come to a map I was on and ask everyone to get to there tag basically not showing me any sort of respect whatsoever. Really glad those days are long gone and over with..

It was like instead of working together people wanted to prove who is the best commander. I never tried to be better than anyone. I only wanted to help my server out. I’m glad most of those people are long gone but even today I see things like this happen and it usually happens when it is a tag that people are not familiar with.

I really got burnt out though from commanding and don’t really do it much anymore.

Puck.9612:

briggah.7910:

Hey if you want to sit on your spy account and contribute nothing to your server besides spying then be my guest.

How hard is it to set up an old laptop next to your main computer and watch map chat and the commander tag while playing on your main computer?

I guess that is why we have discussions here lol tbh I never thought of that

You are really overthinking this guys.

1. Spy makes free account.
2. Spy gets some levels and goes to WvW. This isnt a very time intensive thing, even with the new level 60 gate.
3. Spy gets verified in your server’s teamspeak.

He doesnt need to sit on the map or mess with your stuff, he can just hang out with a second TS open and listen to the commander talk. And ANet cant touch him because TS is outside the scope of the game.

Why do you even care about winning matchups. You’re playing a game not a spreadsheet.

/thread

Raven.9603:

You are really overthinking this guys.

1. Spy makes free account.
2. Spy gets some levels and goes to WvW. This isnt a very time intensive thing, even with the new level 60 gate.
3. Spy gets verified in your server’s teamspeak.

He doesnt need to sit on the map or mess with your stuff, he can just hang out with a second TS open and listen to the commander talk. And ANet cant touch him because TS is outside the scope of the game.

TS isn’t part of the game so its up to the people to admin them better if they are worrying about spies.

In my Opinion spying is like cheating.
Yes, Anet can’t do much about it, BUT Fairplay is something completly different.

You can play cheesy builds, do what ever you want, BUT using a second account/sitting in the Teamspeak channel of your ennemy Team, isn’t fair, or honorable, it’s just disgusting.

If you are a commander: i please you, do not use informations provided by spys. If possible kick them out of your ts channel, do not let spys corrupt our ingame experience.

If you are a spy: Is winning a WvW Matchup so important to you, that it seems valid to you, to minimize the joy of a whole server? Is it so important that it’s ok to forget anything you know about fairplay? Is your server so bad that you need to break the “unwritten” rules?

if you are a dev. is there really nothing you can do about spys? is there a way, you can change the AGB, to forbid this behavior?

Rikit Runk.5170:

In my Opinion spying is like cheating.

It isn’t cheating because everyone has access to it, more like bending the rules. However in true war and warfare spying is a real thing no matter how dirty a tactic. Just like in real war there are anti-spy tactics that can get put in place given spy’s causing to much of an advantage.

Eh, it’s cheap. Like placing a trebuchet in spawn area.

You can counter it, but it’s silly to have to in a video game.

Jayne.9251:

Eh, it’s cheap. Like placing a trebuchet in spawn area.

You can counter it, but it’s silly to have to in a video game.

Agreed. Also technically it can be against the ToS if it can be proven the passing on of info from spy to real server commanders is manipulating the match up or causing others on the spy server grief.

If you haven’t seen it before, you’d be surprised how effective it is for a troll/spy to tag up the same color as a pugmander to disrupt/split the zerg.

Also, most tiers are pretty static, with each server only ever matched up with maybe 3-4 other servers. So a spy/troll doesn’t really need that many free accounts.

Spies can also be more bold now because losing a F2P account means nothing (not that that ever happens).

They don’t have to sit on the account in the first place. All they have to do is make a character that seems legit, get it into WvW on the server they want to spy on, and ask for TS perms. With TS alone servers have been spying on one another for a very long time. I certainly don’t condone it and have don’t see the appeal in snitching on positioning to other teams, but some people are just that bored and where there’s a will, they will always have a way, unfortunately.

Or you could, you know, enjoy the game like all the other people instead of being a giant kitten.

Also, nice job comparing a game for kids to true war…

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Rikit Runk.5170:

In my Opinion spying is like cheating.

It isn’t cheating because everyone has access to it, more like bending the rules. However in true war and warfare spying is a real thing no matter how dirty a tactic. Just like in real war there are anti-spy tactics that can get put in place given spy’s causing to much of an advantage.

Downloading and installing a cheat tool is verry easy and quick.
(5 Min google search + 5min download + 5min setup)
Installing GW2 on a second device and creating a second Account takes much more time. (1min google search + several hours download & patching)
So hacking is more accessable than multiboxing.
And i guess we can confirm, that using hacking tools is cheating. so to say something isn’t cheating, because everyone can do it, is an invalid statement.

If you feel like recon will help your team, how about doing it in a fair way, by loging in to your own server, and follow the ennemy zerg around with a stealth havy class like mesmer or thief?
It would be great if one person were only allowed to be loged in with one account at a time, sadly it’s almost impossible to control this. So it’s the task of us, the community, to stand up against spys and trolls.

WikiQuote:

Cheating is the getting of a reward for ability by dishonest means or finding an easy way out of an unpleasant situation. It is generally used for the breaking of rules to gain unfair advantage in a competitive situation.

Most real wvw ppl and the ones who where spying had more then one account and would have to simply delete there hero to free tranfer to the world that they where playing vs. There is a counter spy trick where you use tags to throw off spys to location or you only have small zerg to throw off where the main group is. Its very funny to see a full map fore attk a very small group only to get flank by the main group.

My favourite anti-spy tactic is to befriend them. Be as friendly as possible, helpful as possible, follow them everywhere, wave a lot.

A new player will be grateful for the extra company. A spy? Not so much.

And, in effect, they become stellar scouts — if they’re in a tower and it’s empty, that means incoming shortly. I pay particular attention to the ones that check out each piece of siege and its placement, but don’t refresh it. (haha, now all spies will manically start refreshing siege to avoid detection, my goodness, win-win).

Rikit Runk.5170:

And i guess we can confirm, that using hacking tools is cheating. so to say something isn’t cheating, because everyone can do it, is an invalid statement.

WikiQuote:

Cheating is the getting of a reward for ability by dishonest means or finding an easy way out of an unpleasant situation. It is generally used for the breaking of rules to gain unfair advantage in a competitive situation.

I mean something that anyone can do with the game not 3rd party software, my apologies for bad wording. Also I don’t recall anywhere there are rules against multiple accounts and sharing information between servers, however using 3rd party software is against the rules. By rules I mean the terms and conditions of playing Guild Wars 2 on their servers. If you do find somewhere in the Terms and Conditions that this in not allowed then I would have to agree and say it’s cheating and apologize.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Also I don’t recall anywhere there are rules against multiple accounts and sharing information between servers

Any rule against that would cripple legitimate uses such as when guilds on opposite servers message each other to discover which map they are on so they can meet and have some fun battles. Or GvG guilds arranging a scrim. Or when roamers come across each other and duel then message each other to say go again or good fight. Or when players have accounts on opposing servers so they can duel/small man fight their friends.

Players seem to often forget that there is no open world PvP in Guild Wars 2, something that players from other MMOs are used to, and WvW is used as the replacement for that.

The only problem I have with spying in GW2 is that… when a real life spy is found out they are tortured / killed, there is risk involved and there are ways to weed out the spies.

In GW2 on the other hand, you can reduce a spy to a troll, that is about it. He may not be able to get access to your voip or anything that you can control, but you cannot disable his character in game. He can still waste supply, put down annoying mesmer portals, mess with siege, etc and there is nothing you can do about it.

cons: it means you’re a kittenbag

Now that new guild upgrades are announced if a guild leaves the public use option on, spys can ‘waste’ the active abilities of objectives.