Joining enemy open squad and focusing the commander?

[Zape.2094]

Hey guys,

so today I realised some people tend to join the enemy server's squad if its open and focus the commander with CC (pulls, moa, etc) constantly whenever an opportunity arises. Whilst I do know that they could generally do a simillar thing by simply targeting the enemy commander in the field, this is reasonably worse, as they can simply click on the commander in the squad to target him at any time and focus down him or whoever else whenever they wish, as it is much easier to track targets and their buffs.

This brings me to the question - is this an exploit, or is this behaviour that ArenaNet acknowledges exists, and thinks is okay? What do you guys think? Is this okay?


The way I see it, this effectively has the potential to destroy open tags even further (they're already super rare tbh, at least on my server), and kind of ruins the experience for alot of players, since their commander will constantly just keep getting overrun by random CC out of his own squad.....

In particular, 3 members (2 engineers and a mesmer) of a certain guild I will not name have joined the enemy squad constantly casting moa / pulls on the commander whenever he would not have a tick of stability going, and it was just plain stupid because all of the fights would end really fast (basically commander would die, then everybody would scatter).

Any input on this would be much appreciated - I've taken screenshots and opened a ticket to arenaNet describing this issue and providing the names of the players, just as a heads up. 

Best,
Zape

[subversiontwo.7501]

If they were concerned, they could just nerf things like the magnet pull, scorpion wire and moa, you know 🙂.

[ASP.8093]

Why do you need to join the enemy squad to pin snipe?

 

Most commanders stick out pretty hard, you can spot them pretty handily after like 30 seconds of observation — their class, their response to being poked, the way the rest of the zerg moves around them, even just their fashion sense (tons of commanders are very big and blinged out on purpose, they're really not trying to hide; also there's all the people who drink tonics when commanding).

 

If you're playing in a group your commander will often put one of those squad marker thingies on the enemy commander so it's easier to tell when the enemy zerg is about to move on you.

Edited August 29, 2021 by ASP.8093

[primatos.5413]

Like i always said: nref tief!!!

[avey.4201]

I join enemy squads, but I prefer to fly kites with them, and follow their group, good times

[gloflop.3510]

My guess is that anet is unaware. Would it be possible to simply kick the player? I never had an enemy player in my squad but in my party. I could easily tell you that it was an enemy.

[guan.1829]

 

[Dawdler.8521]

WvW community: Zergs are the root of all evil! Boon balls! Stacking AoE! Perma stab, perma reflect, perma cleanse! Impossible to fight unless you bring another zerg! Worlds too unbalanced for that! WvW DED!!! ANET FIX!!!!

Also WvW community: Smol groups CC commander and scatter zergs? THATS ILLEGAL!!!

OP is talking about two different things. Joining an enemy squad? Yeah they could disallow that. No need. It really has little to do with CCing, watching enemy boons and identifying the commander though.

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[Corma.7268]

For me, joining enemy squads is an exploit. It is in the same category as seeing on which people are when you have them on your friends list and they (or you) are on a linked server.

The problem is not only the commander focus, but even worse you can always see where the squad is, and where it is going. When you have people from an enemy server in your squad, you are constantly marked, and can't sneak anywhere, and can't stealth.

I sincerely hope this will get adressed with alliances, otherwise i guess it will get much worse.

[Boh.4568]

Wait you can join a squad of an enemy team/server? Do you just click on the comm, join and the game lets you? Lol what a joke

[Zape.2094]

7 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

WvW community: Zergs are the root of all evil! Boon balls! Stacking AoE! Perma stab, perma reflect, perma cleanse! Impossible to fight unless you bring another zerg! Worlds too unbalanced for that! WvW DED!!! ANET FIX!!!!

Also WvW community: Smol groups CC commander and scatter zergs? THATS ILLEGAL!!!

OP is talking about two different things. Joining an enemy squad? Yeah they could disallow that. No need. It really has little to do with CCing, watching enemy boons and identifying the commander though.

 

I usually agree with your posts, but this one is very far fetched. Either you're not understanding the points I made, or are not really seeing the bigger picture here.

First off - I approve of "zergs". WvW was designed as a team activity, and should be kept so. Zergs are a very important part of it, and it doesnt make sense for 4 random people to be able to effectively cap Stonemist castle themselves. I like the large scale combat.

Secondly - it's not a small group zergbusting as you have portrayed. It was actually a zerg vs zerg fight (50ish vs 40ish), in which 3 people from the enemy zerg joined our zerg squad. They were (likely) on voice with their commander, following him very closely, but they were in OUR squad. And no, it's far from having little to do with CCing. Generally its rather hard to constantly have focus on the commander, due to stealth pushes, being stacked very tightly (we were all on voice and stacking very tight on the commander) and constant back-and-forth movement with which you can drop target rather simply.

But with this, even if you stealth, the enemy can just target you immediately as you drop out, since they literally click on the party icon to select you. This is gamebreaking if you ask me. This is like having a targeting add-on, that with one button automatically targets the enemy commander. No matter where he is. No matter how many people stand on top of him. 

Maybe you disagree with me, and that's fine. But I still believe that this is UNINTENDED by ArenaNet, and is therefore likely to be an exploit.

Best,
Zape

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

if anet would understand that portals* and singletarget pulls with long range are just not good for Wvw, they#d have removed this crap yet.

*actually rather stealthing in keeps and towers should get nerfs, maybe putting special revealer NPCs inside there would be smarter than destroying portals, as mesmer portal isn't really that problematic.

 

its more the issue that portals can be put inside keeps while permastealthing, making these objectives even with full wall health no safe space. which is just not healthy, thief and mesmers should not have these kind of long stealth upkeeps within Wvw.

 

till then, we gotta wait and complain about it, i guess.

[Dawdler.8521]

4 hours ago, Zape.2094 said:

I usually agree with your posts, but this one is very far fetched. Either you're not understanding the points I made, or are not really seeing the bigger picture here.

First off - I approve of "zergs". WvW was designed as a team activity, and should be kept so. Zergs are a very important part of it, and it doesnt make sense for 4 random people to be able to effectively cap Stonemist castle themselves. I like the large scale combat.

Secondly - it's not a small group zergbusting as you have portrayed. It was actually a zerg vs zerg fight (50ish vs 40ish), in which 3 people from the enemy zerg joined our zerg squad. They were (likely) on voice with their commander, following him very closely, but they were in OUR squad. And no, it's far from having little to do with CCing. Generally its rather hard to constantly have focus on the commander, due to stealth pushes, being stacked very tightly (we were all on voice and stacking very tight on the commander) and constant back-and-forth movement with which you can drop target rather simply.

But with this, even if you stealth, the enemy can just target you immediately as you drop out, since they literally click on the party icon to select you. This is gamebreaking if you ask me. This is like having a targeting add-on, that with one button automatically targets the enemy commander. No matter where he is. No matter how many people stand on top of him. 

Maybe you disagree with me, and that's fine. But I still believe that this is UNINTENDED by ArenaNet, and is therefore likely to be an exploit.

Best,
Zape

In case you missed it, I agreed with you. They could easily disallow joining enemy squads. It's not an "exploit", it's just stupid that one can still do it - it's been possible since squads was introduced. It's been what, 8 years?

But you can *still* just easily pick out the commander in any squad. Just look for the firebrand everyone run like sheeps after, that covers 95% of commanders. It's not rocket science. Even if you remove the ability to join on an enemy squad - again, I see no issues with that - commanders will keep getting CCd left and right if a dedicated group decide that's what they want to do to annoy the zerg. 

You could have ended the thread at joining an enemy open squad. That's the issue.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[ASP.8093]

1 hour ago, kamikharzeeh.8016 said:

if anet would understand that portals* and singletarget pulls with long range are just not good for Wvw, they#d have removed this crap yet.

Stop trying to turn WvW into a frictionless sphere where nobody is allowed to do anything weird or fun.

[phreeak.1023]

At least Commander focus is for most fight squads not really important, unless u play against Vabbi and Lipton is online and wants his 5min of fame in YouTube Videos no one cares about. 

Edited August 29, 2021 by phreeak.1023

[TheGrimm.5624]

So when trying to figure out why enemy sides could join together the only thing we could come up with in the past was to allow for it to be used to organize GvG. The question is, does anyone do this or are they instead just more using it to troll, and/or for the even fewer times of people joining for fun as seen above. In an ideal world this would be a separate toggle on the create squad and party screen that indicates allow enemies to join. When ever you get a random request to join your party or squad it quite often is someone from the other side trying to see if you will accept so they can do whatever, which to me has mostly to try and troll. Your mileage will vary. But is it an exploit, don't think so. Is it an unattended feature, yes. Should the logic behind it be reviewed, yes. But that's my 2 cents.

[Strider Pj.2193]

16 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

So when trying to figure out why enemy sides could join together the only thing we could come up with in the past was to allow for it to be used to organize GvG. The question is, does anyone do this or are they instead just more using it to troll, and/or for the even fewer times of people joining for fun as seen above. In an ideal world this would be a separate toggle on the create squad and party screen that indicates allow enemies to join. When ever you get a random request to join your party or squad it quite often is someone from the other side trying to see if you will accept so they can do whatever, which to me has mostly to try and troll. Your mileage will vary. But is it an exploit, don't think so. Is it an unattended feature, yes. Should the logic behind it be reviewed, yes. But that's my 2 cents.

I’ve used it to just get better.

 

Someone wrecks me, I send them a note saying nice job or something, and on occasion joined a party with them to work on regular chat. 
 

This, of course, requires two players of some maturity lol.  But yeah, it’s been a help before.  And I’d hate to lose the option.

[Famine.7915]

Seems more work to join the squad than to just target him. Not hard at all to pick out the commanders and their support. Can have prime targets zoned after only a few seconds of an encounter.

[Sleepwalker.1398]

On 8/29/2021 at 11:41 AM, primatos.5413 said:

Like i always said: nref tief!!!

Why mate???
I'm pretty crap thief so only play P/P...however i like my Scorpion Wire.