Guild Wars 2

@ANET:

Is the use of spies in WvW officially allowed?

To have players sit on an enemy server and relay team/map chat information?

To have people access voice communication channels and relay information?

To have players follow around enemy commander’s and livestream troop movement?

It has been a typical sight the past weeks where players would either use an alt account or their main account, transfer to whatever server their “home” team is facing and relay information back to their team via 3rd party voice communications. Information that while yes is public to the server, but is intended to be private to the server’s community and not released outside of the world’s own players.

Is this behavior allowed? If it is not how can we go about reporting it to ensure the guilty face the consequences.

Don’t forget watching peoples streams that is a good way to see what is going on.

I think its allowed.

I would like an answer too. Report them for exploiting or will it just get the reporter banned for misuse of report? I’m pretty sure ANet won’t do anything about folks in 3rd party comms since that isn’t their problem, but theres still plenty of people listening in to team chat, wasting supply on walltop rams and things like that.

I know this kind of thing is expected from time to time, but here it just seems to be entirely too prevalent, and it kills any attempt at real strategy. I havent seen an EB keep in a week that didn’t have useless rams built or being built.

How are you going to give orders any more complicated than zerg here or there if your only means of communication is not even remotely secure?

Zierk, if you think about it, there will ALWAYS be spies in a war. Its up to how you deal with it and how its countered that determines which team will be at an advantage (theoretically you could send someone to a server and build their reputation and join a top guild, just to relay information secretly on voice chat or other communications… its hard to catch sometimes and not as easy as just an unguilded never before pug standing there afk or building flame rams in open field).

I think we can actually use spies to our advantage, by making use of commander/guild chat private voice channels, and false information to confuse and throw off the other team. Counter-intelligence can be used to gain advantage and perhaps even discredit the validity of spy intel.

alphillyboy.2064:

Zierk, if you think about it, there will ALWAYS be spies in a war. Its up to how you deal with it and how its countered that determines which team will be at an advantage (theoretically you could send someone to a server and build their reputation and join a top guild, just to relay information secretly on voice chat or other communications… its hard to catch sometimes and not as easy as just an unguilded never before pug standing there afk or building flame rams in open field).

I think we can actually use spies to our advantage, by making use of commander/guild chat private voice channels, and false information to confuse and throw off the other team. Counter-intelligence can be used to gain advantage and perhaps even discredit the validity of spy intel.

And while you are correct, if it is allowed per ANET then I will simply quit complaining about being spied on and start spying myself. Hell I played EVE for a long long time, lets do this.

My take is that since this is almost impossible to truly track and regulate it will be labeled as a viable tactic.

Same with hoping on servers to dump supplies or simply take up queue spaces.

As long as WvWvW remains as competitive as it is with a point system and ultimate goal of 1st place glory ppl will use whatever tactics they can.

Every other online game created that has some form of boosting has had boosters take full advantage of it.

Anet did say b4 spies are allow when many reports were on ET spies on opponent server

PS: Im lazy to dig the thread out but u can find it urself.. its deep in this forum

Now I’ve not complained about many of ANet’s decisions, but the whole spying is allowed thing gets me. It basically cripples any advanced tactical cabability, limiting it only to large guilds. At which point pugs can and most likely will feel left out and will be interfering with the good of the server, taking up the space of a member of a large guild that could be in on the plan.

I guess all I can do is hope they implement guesting soon so all this free transfers foolishness can be done away with. I’m sure it would reduce this crap quite a bit if it cost these spies something to do it.

Not gonna lie, it’s funny when bad spies don’t even try to hide and start kittenol-ing in team chat. Spy fail. It does make the ‘war’ aspect seem a bit more real to me. Spies are a definite problem in any real war. Like someone said upthread, it’s all about trying to use it to our advantage! Hopefully while not being a terribad ‘lol just took ur kitten lololol ps: butts’ troll like we’ve seen this week.

Hopefully anet turns off the stupid free transfers soon, ugh. That won’t solve the TS problem, but it will make at least some of these motherkittens think twice about server hopping just to be a spy (tho not those with more money than sense).

I think the logic behind the “it makes it more real, because real war has spies” mentality would be acceptable and fine, except in real war, if you find a spy, you kill them. In a real war, a spy can’t actually say, completely destroy the supplies in one of your locations by turning them all into a battering ram on top of a wall. They have to work in very small and subtle ways. Spies in PvP don’t have to, and there is absolutely no consequence to their actions, which can drastically change the team’s ability to defend a location. A single spy can basically guarantee a point falls if the defender to attacker ratio is close. Multiple spies, and it doesn’t even have to be that close anymore.

The lack of subtlety is something of a shame. Some folks are unabashed about it because there’s no way to combat it. If spies are part of the metagame, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t be, there ought to be actually resources to manage them if discovered. There are some but they are limited.

I say embrace the concept and make it into an actual mechanic. With risks and rewards.

In my opinion, such actions should not be considered bannable. but should be discouraged. Think about WW2 or the Cold War where countries sent spies to gather intel. however once caught, they were heavily punished. From a perspective that doesn’t use any such spies, i think it’s still reasonable as you are still allocating resources to such tactics.

lol while that is true, I think we’re also confusing spies with saboteurs; which essentially could be somebody friendly fire (thank goodness we don’t have FF in mmos usually), or somebody on your side blowing themselves up or letting the enemy team into the gates/barracks/defenses.

I guess when it comes down to it, any server can essentially free transfer (which is why we probably need to limit this) and just sabotage the supplies, but thats to someones free will and time to do that, unless they have multiple computers and accounts. It also takes a noticeable amount of effort to go and screw up another server, and I haven’t seen anything to the large extent of someone completely screwing up a keep because they used up all the supplies to build flame rams.

I do have to say that I was accusing someone of taking supplies from tower and then building a flame ram on the wall, and called them out (even though it seemed to be a japanese player and perhaps did not understand english). Later I saw them build an arrow cart in a strategic position on the wall later, and we concluded that perhaps they put down the wrong blueprint and didn’t realize they were building the wrong siege. That or they were new and didn’t know what a blueprint was and just got it from jumping puzzle (or didn’t know what a flame ram is).

Although I would say seeing 5-10 flame rams in the middle of a field somewhere is most likely deliberate sabotage.

I think that, obviously, it shouldn’t be banned. Mostly because there are too many people who specifically derive all of their joy in life from being griefers, and hey, at least they’re griefing to the benefit of a team, instead of just their own sadism.

However, I think there could feasibly be a votekick system of some sort. Every 30 minutes or so, someone can elect to try votekicking a player, and then everyone within a specific range of that player would have to do something like a /votekickagree, and majority would have to rule. This could also be the case with people who sit idle in the spawn, which is really obnoxious during peak hours— they obviously aren’t helping the fight. While the system could obviously be abused, at very least it would discourage the ability for spies to do anything more than relay movement data.

Votekick seems easily abused, aside for idle individuals/bots. I don’t know what the more elegant solution would be but I’d imagine there is one.

If spies are allowed, there must be a system to combat them if discovered. Votekick is pretty much the only solution available and pretty safe as long as the required approval rate is set high enough, say 100 yes votes – so the vast majority. Pretty hard to abuse this.

When free server transfers end the “spy” stuff will decrease.
They are gonna implement the guesting thing which makes me think that server transfers aren’t going to be very cheap.

Spies are a pretty bad problem. The other day at durios, ET treb from SM was taking out all our siege with pin point accuracy even when it was placed in completely hidden spots like under the supply depot roof.

anet should just make it so that you are locked out of WvW until the current match ends when you server transfer. there will still be scumbags out there that will purchase 2nd accounts but it will reduce the amount of spies greatly.

OP ur proposals are very hard to implement. anet cant really ban spies because there is no way to catch them. even if you can get a video of proof, there is no way to know who is responsible.

Spies are frustrating to deal with in games like GW2, as there aren’t many effective ways to deal with them. In EVE you can shoot people you determine are spies. In GW2 they are invulnerable and all you can really do is stop using the in-game chat. Which unfortunately means that people who aren’t part of a larger guild who can communicate easily with third-party tools are going to be left out of the loop.

I see it as an exploit. If it falls outside of the match then its an exploit. How can you sit there with a straight face and claim its a valid tactic to use a server transfer option that is currently free, to transfer to the opposing server and then relay information about what is being said in their team chat to your server, using a 3rd party voice chat program.

In a real competition this would be seen as cheating and you would be disqualified.

The only reason they haven’t addressed this, in my opinion, is because there isn’t much they can do about it.

They could however, make it so that if you transfer after a match has started, that you are unable to participate in WvW on your new realm until the next match.

While super lame (happened against the french from Arbrostone too), i don´t think that Anet can do something about it, what should they do, ban a customer who bought the game?

Uder.9187:

While super lame (happened against the french from Arbrostone too), i don´t think that Anet can do something about it, what should they do, ban a customer who bought the game?

I know Augury Rock had a spy on my server (Desolation) a couple of days ago, so it could be they infiltrated Arborstone too.

I haven’t heard anything about Deso sending spies anywhere, but then I guess they’d keep hushhush about that anyway, so if it was us, I feel pretty bad. It just feels so cheap to do that.

I think also happened in my game: Dzagonur had a spy in whiteside ridge.

The real way spies are dealt with is that you kill them.

It will never happen here, sadly.

I personally would LOVE for friendly fire to be on. The game would become SO much more tactical.

AOE fields would become nightmares.

And yes, you catch a spy, you kill him.

Considering anet initiated the 24 hour server transfer lock down to try and stop people from transferring to other servers for spying and sabotaging. That anybody claiming it is a valid tactic is simply in denial.

Every server has spies…after the free transfers are up, every server will still have spies. You need to setup a good information structure now, in the games infant stages to really shine later on.

I don’t see anything wrong with spies. I am concerned about people getting on to blatantly burn supplies in keeps though.

Coldviper.6794:

I don’t see anything wrong with spies. I am concerned about people getting on to blatantly burn supplies in keeps though.

The supply issue could be solved by only letting members of the claiming guild take supplies from the keep, that would even solve the problem with people that don’t listen when everyone is telling them “don’t take supplies from the keep” ;p

Spies should not be allowed unless Anet plans on making them killable. If there is no way to deal with the spies, then there is no reason to allow supplies. As it stands “spying” is an obvious exploitation of the free server transfers, and should be treated as an exploit.

Dinks.2478:

Spies should not be allowed unless Anet plans on making them killable. If there is no way to deal with the spies, then there is no reason to allow supplies. As it stands “spying” is an obvious exploitation of the free server transfers, and should be treated as an exploit.

Totally agree.

The problem is, unlike real spies, that you cant do anything about them. Meaning its a free card and I would say exploit. Same goes for the supply wasters that other servers sends in. You can only watch….

I think there should be a vote kick option which puts whoever is vote kicked out of the battleground for a period of time (24 hours or something). This would also help reduce eggheads who ramble in chat about meaningless stupidity.

The spies don’t need to remain hidden, best thing a spy can do is to buy the Commanders Book, turn on their tag and keep dragging the zerg into stupid fights they cant win.

Spies are here to stay. Even when free transfers are ended, there’ll be spies.

I doubt ANet will implement a player driven policing mechanic. It’ll be too open for abuse and griefing.

There are some options to fix this problem without creating a bigger one, but all of them require what I’d call refined game design, considerably above the present level of WvW design.