Guild Wars 2

It seems to me to be a rather strange idea that after one dies, they can still see their surroundings, effectively acting as a scout for as long as they choose (as long as they interact with their equipped items). It does not matter in PvE, as the mobs aren’t competing against the users, but in WvW, it seems as if it is an oversight that allows for dead players to spy on enemy numbers as long as they don’t respawn.

Why not blacken the screen to give them no field of vision? They can still be resurrected by others, and they can still see their own location via the map, but they can’t see enemy numbers/objectives/etc (except for their downed on the map).

I doubt there’ll be a change to this, but I thought I’d put the idea out there for discussion/contemplation.

To play devil’s advocate, it’s not like they can scout at no cost to the server. First, lying there dead is pretty boring, and I doubt anyone would want to do it for more than 30 minutes or so. Second, by lying there dead, the scout is unable to help with other objectives, whether that be zerging, walking yaks, flipping camps, etc.

mango.9267:

To play devil’s advocate, it’s not like they can scout at no cost to the server. First, lying there dead is pretty boring, and I doubt anyone would want to do it for more than 30 minutes or so. Second, by lying there dead, the scout is unable to help with other objectives, whether that be zerging, walking yaks, flipping camps, etc.

To play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, a multiboxer could leave his accounts unattended for X period of time and swap items out to refresh his timers every once in a while all while actually doing things on his main account and simultaneously spying on his alt accounts who are lying dead in key locations.

Viking Jorun.5413:

mango.9267:

To play devil’s advocate, it’s not like they can scout at no cost to the server. First, lying there dead is pretty boring, and I doubt anyone would want to do it for more than 30 minutes or so. Second, by lying there dead, the scout is unable to help with other objectives, whether that be zerging, walking yaks, flipping camps, etc.

To play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, a multiboxer could leave his accounts unattended for X period of time and swap items out to refresh his timers every once in a while all while actually doing things on his main account and simultaneously spying on his alt accounts who are lying dead in key locations.

Fair enough, but I imagine it’d be quite a hassle to tab between accounts, and, unless the scout has multiple monitors, it’d probably be impossible to keep constant vigil on what’s happening around his dead alt.

Moreover, in servers with queues, the scout’s alts are still taking up queue space from other players who’d participate in other objectives, so there would still be some opportunity cost.

Viking Jorun.5413:

[…] a multiboxer could leave his accounts unattended for X period of time and swap items out to refresh his timers every once in a while all while actually doing things on his main account and simultaneously spying on his alt accounts who are lying dead in key locations.

I think this would likely fail to satisfy the “multiboxing permitted” condition:

“3.You must be actively playing on each account.”

Ref: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Policy-3rd-Party-Programs-Multi-Boxing-Macros/first#post1532762

Of course, enforcement is another issue entirely and “actively playing” is potentially subjective. I simply find the devil of the devil, in this case, to be devilishly devil’d.

You can’t stay there forever since there is an afk timer to kick you out. This isn’t even a bright idea. If people have alt accounts, they can join the opposing server and walk freely around their territories while taking up valuable slot space.

It would be nice to throw on a visual effect, like blurring the entire screen perhaps.

I have used that dirty tactic before. I ran into the lord’s room in SMC and laid dead, tracking the enemy zerg’s movement the whole time. I do agree that they should at least make it look like the LoZ:Ocarina of Time death screen so you can’t contribute more than what your dead body should contribute.

Basch.1347:

It seems to me to be a rather strange idea that after one dies, they can still see their surroundings, effectively acting as a scout for as long as they choose (as long as they interact with their equipped items). It does not matter in PvE, as the mobs aren’t competing against the users, but in WvW, it seems as if it is an oversight that allows for dead players to spy on enemy numbers as long as they don’t respawn.

Why not blacken the screen to give them no field of vision? They can still be resurrected by others, and they can still see their own location via the map, but they can’t see enemy numbers/objectives/etc (except for their downed on the map).

I doubt there’ll be a change to this, but I thought I’d put the idea out there for discussion/contemplation.

There is no need to mess with the screen at all.Aion had a great system for this tbh,they removed the ability to use the chat when you died..all you could do is lay there and watch.

Caedmon.6798:

Basch.1347:

It seems to me to be a rather strange idea that after one dies, they can still see their surroundings, effectively acting as a scout for as long as they choose (as long as they interact with their equipped items). It does not matter in PvE, as the mobs aren’t competing against the users, but in WvW, it seems as if it is an oversight that allows for dead players to spy on enemy numbers as long as they don’t respawn.

Why not blacken the screen to give them no field of vision? They can still be resurrected by others, and they can still see their own location via the map, but they can’t see enemy numbers/objectives/etc (except for their downed on the map).

I doubt there’ll be a change to this, but I thought I’d put the idea out there for discussion/contemplation.

There is no need to mess with the screen at all.Aion had a great system for this tbh,they removed the ability to use the chat when you died..all you could do is lay there and watch.

Yes because using the in-game chat is both the only and most effective communication method in WvW…

Tom Gore.4035:

Caedmon.6798:

Basch.1347:

It seems to me to be a rather strange idea that after one dies, they can still see their surroundings, effectively acting as a scout for as long as they choose (as long as they interact with their equipped items). It does not matter in PvE, as the mobs aren’t competing against the users, but in WvW, it seems as if it is an oversight that allows for dead players to spy on enemy numbers as long as they don’t respawn.

Why not blacken the screen to give them no field of vision? They can still be resurrected by others, and they can still see their own location via the map, but they can’t see enemy numbers/objectives/etc (except for their downed on the map).

I doubt there’ll be a change to this, but I thought I’d put the idea out there for discussion/contemplation.

There is no need to mess with the screen at all.Aion had a great system for this tbh,they removed the ability to use the chat when you died..all you could do is lay there and watch.

Yes because using the in-game chat is both the only and most effective communication method in WvW…

So they should do everything with TS in the back of their minds ? And even with TS in their minds players jump in other servers TS to spy for their own server,wich also happens quite alot and a black screen still wouldnt do or fix a thing to prevent that either.Spying will keep on happening no matter if they blacken the screen,no matter if they disable the chat.I just think a disable chat option would be more attractive then being greeted by a black screen,or a screen so messed up that you cant see a thing.In that case,maybe a timer on how long you can lay death before being ported automatically to Spawn or the closest wp would be more helpful.

Caedmon.6798:

Tom Gore.4035:

Caedmon.6798:

Basch.1347:

It seems to me to be a rather strange idea that after one dies, they can still see their surroundings, effectively acting as a scout for as long as they choose (as long as they interact with their equipped items). It does not matter in PvE, as the mobs aren’t competing against the users, but in WvW, it seems as if it is an oversight that allows for dead players to spy on enemy numbers as long as they don’t respawn.

Why not blacken the screen to give them no field of vision? They can still be resurrected by others, and they can still see their own location via the map, but they can’t see enemy numbers/objectives/etc (except for their downed on the map).

I doubt there’ll be a change to this, but I thought I’d put the idea out there for discussion/contemplation.

There is no need to mess with the screen at all.Aion had a great system for this tbh,they removed the ability to use the chat when you died..all you could do is lay there and watch.

Yes because using the in-game chat is both the only and most effective communication method in WvW…

So they should do everything with TS in the back of their minds ? And even with TS in their minds players jump in other servers TS to spy for their own server,wich also happens quite alot and a black screen still wouldnt do or fix a thing to prevent that either.Spying will keep on happening no matter if they blacken the screen,no matter if they disable the chat.I just think a disable chat option would be more attractive then being greeted by a black screen,or a screen so messed up that you cant see a thing.In that case,maybe a timer on how long you can lay death before being ported automatically to Spawn or the closest wp would be more helpful.

I think black screen would be more attractive than not being able to chat, because I like to comment my death / the battle / the weather to my guildmates etc.

So which one of us is right?

That’s right, neither. So maybe just leave it as is. As you said yourself, any means they use can be circumvented anyway (although I would argue circumventing the black screen would require much more hassle than circumventing the chat block).

Sometime you need watch how the battle is progressing to gauge whether waiting for someone to revive you is a good idea or to respawn. Not being able to see is a deterrent to that.

Simple Solution (but I guess it won’t be fixed as it hasn’t been fixed yet…):
auto-switch to the map
So you can see if there are enough green dots left to revive or you can choose your spawn but you can’t see the enemy anymore.

Btw. dead people should be dumb as for realistic matters

It has already been datamined that there are new WvW skills incoming.
Regarding this issue when you finish someone they are forced to return to the waypoint.
in that case i personally think its your own fault to not finish them and just zerg them.

Besides that I don’t see the problem with it, if you palce your own scouts around if someone remains dead around the map he won’t be very mobile to even know where your blob is going or able to use sieges in the tower.
You call it to your zerg, if the enemy has a decent zerg you will not even enter the portal.
Your scouts that remain alive can.

This is not about defensive scouting but about offensive scouting for example in enemy structures.

How can you force someone to a waypoint when there are different waypoints to choose?!

Viking Jorun.5413:

To play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, a multiboxer could leave his accounts unattended for X period of time and swap items out to refresh his timers every once in a while all while actually doing things on his main account and simultaneously spying on his alt accounts who are lying dead in key locations.

If someone is multiboxing multiple accounts and wants to spy, they don’t need to “lie dead in key locations”, they’ll just move one account to the enemy server so that they can see AND hear what the enemy is doing.

Let them lie there as long as they like. Simply bring up the map view on death with no way to exit it other than respawning.

/end of corpse spying

+1, like the idea of blacking out most if not all of the screen once dead. I do like to be able to cheer on others but it is a big tactical advantage.

This is war. There is always espionage in war.

Mountain out of a mole hill.

The easy fix is to blank out the screen. The better fix is to force players to port when dead. Solves numerous zerg balancing problems as well.

Big Erk.2058:

This is war. There is always espionage in war.

When an enemy dies behind lines, allies have to put a hoody and muffs over their head thanks to advanced dead soldier technology. I think spying has been part of warfare, but not from dead soldiers.

Big Erk.2058:

This is war. There is always espionage in war.

The ones doing the espionage are usually numbered among the living, though

If ArenaNet wants to introduce active mechanics for espionage (along with counters), I’m all for it. I even made a suggestion to this effect before the game launched whereby players could purchase a consumable All Seeing Eye that would allow them to spy on an area.

It had a bunch of limiters built in (can only use one at a time, similar to traps; can be destroyed by the enemy if found; immobilizes the owner when actually viewing what the eye sees; has time limits, etc.), but still provided a form of espionage in which players would take an active role.

Lying there dead on the ground as a passive corpse spy, invulnerable and with no counters available to your opponent, is not espionage.

Saylu.8271:

Sometime you need watch how the battle is progressing to gauge whether waiting for someone to revive you is a good idea or to respawn. Not being able to see is a deterrent to that.

There’s already a notification in the map view that says, “A noble soul is attempting to revive you.” You don’t need to see the progress of the battle to know whether or not you’re being revived.

However, I can concede the point there’s value in watching to see if your allies’ attempts to rez you are fruitless or not. If it’s obviously hurting your side to stick around as a corpse hoping for a rez, then having the visual feedback to inform the decision to respawn or not is essential.

So a compromise. For X number of seconds (10, 20, or 30 seconds?) after having been sent to defeat, corpses can see what’s going on around them. When that time limit expires, the corpse’s view is automatically sent to the world map. If a player comes along to rez you while in map view, the current “A noble soul is attempting to revive you.” message will still pop up.

Other than that, your only choices are (a) continue to stare at the world map or (b) return to a waypoint.

There is merit in the general premise upon which this thread is based. However, I would venture that in the spectrum of TODOs and NEEDs, this falls into the noise.

The ROI for any amount of developer time on this is negatively weighted against almost ANY other suggestion.

Prognostication — an uncertain science — might suggest that it is more likely that support will be added for third-party olfactory devices or internet enabled catheters.

In the union of possible and actionable changes, there are MANY alternatives that provide a greater positive delta.

Conversely, I suspect the community can come to consensus that dealing with zombie spies is marginally more important than enhancing the ability for toons to trim their nose hairs (although it may take a 13 page “sky-is-falling” forum debate).

One crazy idea (not new): after 5 minutes of inactivity let us use action (F) to send enemies on base/spawn.

In the thread Stomping: New Mechanics it’s been suggested that a finishing move can be used to forcibly send a defeated player back to their spawn point. A simple, elegant solution.

/end of corpse spying

1 dead guy being a spotter for treb shots clearing all defensive siege before the main zerg pushes in or just checking the number of defender inside.

simple fade to black anyone.

It is an advantage to lay dead there. More than once could I give my guild zerg valuable information about the development of the fight, once I laid dead there. Once I even died on a wall and the fight went down to the ground inside the keep and I had the perfect angle to perfectly oversee the fight.

People who die should get a black screen, with the message: “due to your incompetence, you now eat grass”, or maybe something nicer