Siege Troll Discussion

#1 - Sept. 17, 2014, 3:29 p.m.

Let’s talk about Siege Trolls and what we can do about them. The problems that have been brought up are:

• Creating Siege to hit the siege cap
• Creating the wrong type of siege to hit area siege caps
• Spending supply on needless siege to drain supply depots
• Dropping siege on top of legitimate siege build sites

Here are some parameters and questions we should consider:

• Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?
• What are the characteristics of bad behavior that are different than good behavior?
• How do we prevent bad behavior without making too big of an impact on good behavior?
• What restrictions might we be able to live with as good players in order to prevent bad behavior?

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

We are just brainstorming here so I’d love to hear alternative suggestion or whether or not this would work for you.

I know there are other threads on this but I want to start with a clean discussion and focus on how we can realistically address this issue. Let’s keep this constructive and focused.

Thanks,
John

#135 - Sept. 17, 2014, 7:57 p.m.

Great discussion so far! I came back from a couple of meetings and was blown away to see so many excellent ideas and constructive posts.

A couple of ideas seem to be taking root in the discussion. One is the idea of voting to dismantle siege. We were talking about that one while reading this thread and think a version of it might work. Straight up dismantling siege will probably lead to a different type of griefing or even a legitimate group deciding that they don’t like someone else’s legitimate placement of siege so they dismantle it. However if a piece of siege gets let’s say 10 votes we could drop the timer on it to something like 5 minutes. That way one group could not simply remove another groups siege if they are manning it or planning to man it. We would probably need to make an exception for Golems.

A number of people talked about having the dismantled siege go back to nearby supply depots. One idea we kicked around was dropping a portion of the supply that it took to build the siege as a one time pick up.

There were a number of suggestions around labelling dropped siege to allow players decide which siege to build. I like the idea of filtering dropped siege. Maybe you could have some of the following settings:

• Show my Commander’s siege
• Show my Squad’s siege
• Show my Guild’s siege
• Show my Party’s siege

If siege dropped doesn’t meet one of the settings you pick, you won’t get an interact for them.

The exhaustion idea that I kicked out there has had some mixed responses. There were some amazingly good ideas to make it work a whole lot better. For example, I really liked the suggestions that the cool down time is reduced for each member of your squad. I am really concerned though about the affects that you guys brought up on small havok groups and defenders. There were some suggestions that I think would make it work. For example, a couple of suggestions were along the lines of if you are actively playing it will clear your exhaustion. So if you down an enemy, break down a gate, destroy enemy siege etc. your exhaustion would be cleared.

If we tweaked Exhaustion to this would it work? :

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 five stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege
4. If a player downs an enemy, destroys siege, breaks down a wall or gate their exhaustion is cleared
5. A commander’s exhaustion is reduced by 30 seconds for each member of his squad

We aren’t tied to this idea at all. I’m just collecting and shaping some of your suggestions on this idea in large part because a lot of people seemed to like it. I’m wondering if there is a version that would work for everyone.

Some sort of community policing also came up a bunch in this discussion. I think there were some great and promising ideas there. But, generally the concern with that comes down to a few things. How many people would be needed to get a person banned? What if not that many people are on? At what lower number will we have to start worrying about groups kicking members of another group because of petty arguments?

Finally, regarding swinging ye olde banhammer, that’s an option but if we can make some reasonable adjustments that greatly reduces the need for that option it will really be the better way to go. I would very much like to steer clear of falling back to that option in this discussion.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions!
John

#327 - Sept. 18, 2014, 6:56 p.m.

Pasiphae.9734:

What if the players could vote to add exhaustion onto another player? Similar to the report function, but community monitored. Players could call out a troll in map chat, confirm the troll, and add exhaustion points to that account. As a result that individual can no longer lay down siege, or pick up and spend supply. Perhaps increase the exhaustion based on number of players reporting. If an account has frequent reports, an automatic email could generate to the devs and they can take whatever appropriate action. This way, legitimate players don’t get penalized and only the trolls get affected. It also allows the community to police itself.

I was about to toss out the exhaustion idea altogether because of the legitimate concerns of small groups that a good number of you have brought up but this post gave me another perspective on it. I’m going to merge some of the ideas you guys have put forth into a new iteration on the design you and I have been working out.

Here is the new proposal based on your ideas:

• Siege Dismantling
  • You DO NOT get exhaustion from placing siege
  • If you own a piece of siege:
    • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Dismantle” that will drop the timer down to one minute
  • If you do not own a piece of siege:
    • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Vote Dismantle”
    • If a piece of siege gets 5 votes:
      • The timer on the siege drops to 5 minutes
      • The player who placed the siege gets a stack of exhaustion
        • In this proposal this is the only way to get exhaustion
  • When a siege timer is reduced to 0 it is dismantled
    • All siege that is dismantled drops 25% of the supply it took to construct
• Exhaustion
  • A player who has 5 stacks of exhaustion can no longer place siege until they have 0 stacks of exhaustion
  • A stack of exhaustion is removed:
    • After 5 minutes
      • For commanders this time is reduced by 2 minutes for each member of your squad for up to 20 minutes
    • For each enemy player defeated
    • For each objective taken

This proposal has these properties:

• Play is not affected at all for anyone unless they repeatedly place siege that is repeatedly voted down
• Players are encouraged to clean up their siege to get a refund and to prevent their siege being voted down
• Players can police themselves by voting down bad siege
• Players who get exhaustion incorrectly can easily remove it by playing WvW normally
• The more siege that gets placed that is left unattended the easier it will be to lose the privilege of placing siege.
• Commanders who actually have people following them can bypass the bulk of the penalty and should easily remove the rest through normal play

For other topics, there seems to be general agreement that some sort of labeling or filtering will help with siege that is dropped onto the area you are trying to build in. Also, I agree that build sites could have a smaller footprint.

Again there were a lot of really good suggestions! I am reading every single post in this thread (and you guys are keeping me busy ) so I really appreciate those of you who have stayed constructive, on topic and within the guidelines that were set down. It is really helping us think out possible ways together of how we could address this problem in a way that would work for everyone.

So now…

ROUND THREE … DISCUSS!

#340 - Sept. 18, 2014, 8:39 p.m.

A general note, when we are kicking around ideas like this we try not to get bogged down with numbers. 5 minutes, stacks, players etc. can easily be 1, 10, 100. That’s all balance and tuning as Tekyn pointed out. The question is if there is any number that would make it work. If there isn’t we can eliminate that idea.

What I’m really looking for is if the concept works and if there are other ideas, thoughts or perspectives that can spark or refine other ideas and that has certainly happened a few times already in this discussion. Many times you follow a path of thinking that then spawns a completely different idea that works out great.

Thanks a ton for your continued input!

#342 - Sept. 18, 2014, 8:56 p.m.

Thanks Tekyn! I will say that this thread has had sooo much participation that it has taken a lot of effort to keep up with it but most people have been really constructive, open and honest so it’s been fun!

I also meant to say in my last post that I’ve been riffing on the exhaustion idea because a lot of people have said that they think it will work or that it’s close to working. I’m not trying to push it as the solution just trying to see where it could go. I’m also taking note of the more straight forward good ideas that don’t really need a lot of discussion to hammer out. It’s also led to a bunch of spin off ideas that I think stand on their own and are great so I’m hoping to hit jump until the mystery box is out of coins

#403 - Sept. 19, 2014, 8:44 p.m.

Thanks for the continued discussion. At this point, I’d like to shelve the exhaustion idea. I completely agree with many of you that it has hit a point of being overly complicated especially for the size of the problem. Also I feel it will only address a few tactics that trolls employ. We did get a lot of great discussion and spin off ideas out of it though.

Zui had an interesting thought that the system could detect a pattern of behavior rather than specific instances of bad behavior but others brought up real fears that no system should be given to players on any scale that that has the potential of being abused or produce false positives.

Pandaman had some interesting ideas about siege slowly returning to their original orientations. I think maybe it could return to the orientation that the owner last set it at. Also some good thoughts about interact precedence.

A couple of ideas that seem to have consensus are some sort of labeling or filtering of siege interacts and reducing the footprint of build sites.

Dismantling siege seemed to have a lot of support but there didn’t seem to be good agreement on who can dismantle whose siege and a lot of defensive players brought up concerns about the defenses they build on objectives and fears that it might get dismantled by others who didn’t see the defensive potential of it.

I’m going to ponder what we discussed here and chat with the team about it. Thanks again for a great discussion!

John