Should espionage/sabotage be considered valid play?

With tactivator pulling, supply draining, siege weapon turning, tag watching, etc., should these real world tactics be accepted?

in no way punishable, will never be, so yeaaaa

No, it's sneaky and underhanded and pretty sad when you have to cheat in a video game to win. IMO it's pretty much the same as being a screen watcher in split screen games.

This stuff is still relevant in 2018?

D:

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:This stuff is still relevant in 2018?

D:

Yes, I don't know how many drivers I've seen get a callout and say oh I already knew the enemy zerg was there. coughcoughcoughJohnnycoughcoughcough Or you show up somewhere and your group has a tag up and suddenly the entire map blob is there to kill 10 of you, so your group tags down and suddenly the BL is silent and you don't see another person and you can suddenly flip their keeps like its nothing. You see allot of it as a transient server, I probably couldn't count on both hands the amount of guilds/drivers that have spies that I've seen they even have people in the enemy TS/Discord listening to the conversation. I will say however I've seen allot less sabotage (no siege capping an area), its mostly been tactivator pullers lately.

I'm voting no, but because this poll, like so many others, seems to want to put words into my mouth as to why my vote is "No", I won't actually click on the poll.

if it was introduced as valid gameplay with specific options and counterplay to it it could be nice.

but the way it is done atm... well I must say I'm impressed by dedication of peopel actually doing this

It's obviously not valid play but it's also very difficult to stop without taking some possibly drastic measures which ANET is unlikely to do.

No. It's a kitten thing for weak little kittens to do.

Only reason why people do it is no consequences.

In reality though, they will probably never find a way to stop it, so at least give people a way to deal with it.

Not sure if WvW have the same rules of sPvP, but if it have, is considered match manipulation and should be bannable offence.

Good heavens, no.

~ Kovu

I think exposing spies is hard enough, but when found, we should be able to do something to them. But what could players do without making anet micromanage all these cases?

Currently, we can:

1. Type strongly worded messages.
2. Follow them around menacingly reporting on their every move.
3. Report them for something that they aren't doing.

How about a voting option (e.g. 25 votes) to make that person temporarily marked on the map and killable? They wouldn't be aligned with any other server; just essentially a hostile ambient creature to all, even in the spawn area.

Unless there's an active counter-play option, then it's really not "playing"... it's "cheating".

it pretty much IS acceptable as there is no way to ban the accounts doing it. I dont do it nor will I ever do it because those that do it are weak. I never cheat. Its cheating really. Plain and simple.

No. This is GW2, not Eve Online

you gonna get no possible precursor loot for this

Spying on other servers/or trolling their tactics so you can attack a structure is just pathetic. It's literally the 12 year old mentality because people can't accept that they got beat or outplayed, so they are "cheating" for an advantage. Imagine a coordinated group just logging 50+ alts in at the same time so you can't defend anything. That's not a "valid" way to win. If you need to cheat to sleep at night, that's on you.

Just sayin', could be valid if formally introduced.

Team Fortress' spy originated from a bug that caused enemy players to look like allies, and they made it into a formal class.

for all intents and purposes it's cheating IMO. It's same as stream snipers. U are using an out of gameplay network to get an advantage. the fact that in wvw u normally can't even communicate with other players unless u block them to get thier name and then unblock them as an exploit should show what the intent was for no communication between servers. , while streamsniping is not really cheating since the streamer himself puts himself out in the public and is bassically doing the virtual version of letting people look at his ships during a battleship game, it is similar to streamsniping in that u use an out of game element,u working around the communication block here counts as out of game. At the same time there is almost no counterplay whatsoever to spies and who in the world desigins a game in wich there are elements where is litterally nothing u can do. not even darksouls developers made thier games with impossible elements. Sabotaging your own siege counts as trolling/grieving and or match manipulation the same it does in pvp.

Spying counts as cheating in my book for the reason layed out.

It is usually the big servers that sent out spy to sabotage, cannot vote until you change the question.

I remember a few matches ago when we was up against jq we could always tell when jq was gonna attack a keep because minutes before the attack all the tacts would be pulled. It's a cheap and underhanded tactic to use and shows a complete lack of any skill from servers that needs to do it.

@"Vagrant.7206" said:

Just sayin', could be valid if formally introduced.

Team Fortress' spy originated from a bug that caused enemy players to look like allies, and they made it into a formal class.

Next mesmer specialisation confirmed? =)

Cheaters should be banned for life.... if Arenanet dared to.

Basically just add a "Who last interacted with the tactic" note in the WvW tactics status and cool down tab. Obviously banners get used a lot so they don't matter as much, but Invulnerability and Emergency Way Point tactics aren't. In all reality though people who pull them as a way to help the enemy server are just players who lack maturity to play fair.

Special note: In some towers, in EBG especially, the tactics are so close to the wall/nodes you might accidentally pull one if you don't pay attention.