Listen, Scouts.

[XenesisII.1540]

Scouting is a very important job, and also an easy job.

If you want your team to respond faster then you need 3 pieces of information.

1. HOW MANY - Use an average if it's too much to count, if it's orange swords it's 25+, in which case you can say a zerg, if it gets to 40+ it's a blob. This is the most important piece of information for your team to respond appropriately, whether we need to send some roamers to a camp, or a zerg to a tower. This cannot and should not be the last piece of information you bother to provide, you want a fast response then put the numbers first or get ignored.

2. WHO DAT- Which side? color, or server name, or guild. Some guilds or server will get faster priority, some won't due to their reputations. Commanders need to know how much time they have to respond, especially if they're tied up in combat already.

3. LOCATION - And no, posting a LINK to the objective just because it has white swords doesn't cut it, if you're not there then ask for "Eyes on objective" so someone nearby can scout it. Many players will just ignore link calls with no additional information provided.

WHAT IS GOING ON - Do they have siege up? are they just killing siege on outer? are they just farting around farming roamers? Is there golems? do we have tactics?

WHAT YOU SHOULD LEARN - Use Outer and Inner as terms for keeps and smc, use Cardinal directions if multiple walls or gates are present such as in the keeps and smc. Use cardinal directions for calling out borderland objectives, no one remembers the names of three different borderland maps that have the same locations, and it's annoying to click on a link to check the location. It's pretty easy to say NC, NEC, NET, SWT, SWC, etc. Or if you're from Mag and went to Clouding College to learn calling WK instead of Bay, EK instead of Hills, NN instead of North Camp. Garrison has a couple special names, WG for watergate, murdergate for the lower west gate, and east gate cause it's the gate in the east..... duh! Or hills has Cata wall which means it's entire outer west wall, or for bay this usually means the south outer wall.

Saying something like "blue at smc" says absolutely nothing, it could be a roamer at east wall, or 3 people at sw wall, or 30 people at north outer gate, it's a giant objective, all the outer walls can be broken, it's has two north inner gates, so be specific on your calls. Saying "30+ blue garri wg 3 golems" or "20 green nw inner smc 2 rams" or "red zerg at net killing siege", is short and gives all the info everyone needs.

STOP BEING LAZY, THANK YOU FOR SCOUTING, AND HAVE A NICE DAY.

Thank you stalker for pointing out you're confused as usual. -->

Edited March 16 by XenesisII.1540

[Limikkin.5418]

Thank you for pointing that out. This should be a must-read for people that start coming to WvW on a regular base.

[Dawdler.8521]

P1 inc.

[Twilightzone.7452]

our copy pasta

"Your scouting request has been denied because all you did was ping an objective which isn't very useful.  Please follow the proper format (location, enemy color, enemy numbers, enemy siege.)"

Only for our server "Scouts" to argue more about that then spending another 5 seconds to scout =(

[CafPow.1542]

I am always baffled when people don’t call who, what, where and how many.

you guys drive a car? When we want do get our driving licence we have to absolve some first responder lessons first like how do you do cor, how do you stabilize somebody who had an accident etc.

you also learn there what you have to say in a 911-call. Exactly that.

what is there, how many injured, where, who are you etc.

this is important info.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Part of being a good scout is learning to be a good defender. Unfortunately, that just doesn't entail just afking in a tower and riniging the bell when you see enemies, although it's a decent start. However, if you do not understand how WvW works and cannot work as an independent unit, you will never be good at scouting reports and depending on your attitude you'll get anywhere from getting ignored to having most of the server block you.

Some of these things require experience and learning, and sadly a lot of people just scream at other people rather than learning.

1.) Knowing how to take a structure.

The most basic thing you need to recognize is if a structure is under attack. That sounds obvious, but a lot of people don't actually seem to know how to take something. Capturing a structure requires the enemy to kill the lord and occupy the control circle. So don't freak out yet  just because there's enemies outside a tower.

You should know how fast the thing will fall without intervention. So if they put down 6 catapults down, you know this thing is going down fast. But if they have only 1 catapult and you are harassing it, you know you have some time.

Oh, and obviously, keeps have an outer and inner to break down. If people only broke outer, that means they can't take the keep yet. Act accordingly.

For these reasons, you do not just randomly ping any structure that has white swords, and you need to judge if the attacking force is actually a serious threat to taking the structure.

While there is nothing wrong with reporting everything, please don't spam chat with irrelevant info.

2.) Knowing how to defend a structure.

One of the signs that you are a bad scout is you just afk yelling for help when you could have just gotten on the oil or cannon and just deterred them as such. You cannot be like "Well, I am a scout; I don't do anything else". Well you could, but nobody will take you seriously.

While there's actually a lot of knowledge that goes down to putting ballistas in the right spots or what not, you should definitely know how to shut down a half hearted attempt. And also report the event as such.

In general, manuevers like siege disables can be risky, but ideally you should alter your build to be more able to do so. Stealth, mobility, and most definitely stunbreaks. But you should run a stunbreak if you're alone.

3.) Track the enemy movements.

It's generally a good idea to guess where enemy players are headed towards, and what they plan to do. And no, pinging an objective they were at 2 minutes agodoesn't do it. Btw it's perfectly fine to make reports when you're lying dead. It may even be easier.

If they're ganking players (especially you), feel free to make note if they're actively trying to kill your players and the general area so people may come together and fight as a group. A lot of people like never report this and then ragequit when they die like a million times asking "why no halp??" when nobody knows what they're ding.. And speaking of that...

4.) Tell people what are you doing

This also seems like a missing art. Like if you say, I'm going to go scout Bay, then people will know they can scout something on the opposite side of the map. Or if you're going to build siege to take some tower, so people don't build some more on the other side. This may arguably be the most important thing to tell people, especially if you are getting rekt.

Or, you can tell people that Fire keep has both walls down and it needs repairs, so people may help with that.

5.) Don't tunnel vision and read the map

So imagine you're in an intense fight in a 1v2 at North Camp defending it,. and nobody is coming. You ping it for help and nobody comes. Then you get annoyed and pinging it a few more times. But still nobody? Why? Well, silly, look at your minimap. There's 2 sets of orange swords on your garrison and literally everyone went to defend it, and honestly why aren't you aware that garrison is under attack?

Point is, know what's going on in the map, and do not expect people to come save your pet project when there's stuff elsewhere. A lot of times people will complain like EBG can't help or vice versa, but it turns out they are getting swamped to (or there's no one actually there). It's fine to ask if there are people doing stuff, but a lot of people just immediately assume the worse and that people are deliberately sipping tea while watching the maps burn..

And yes, you won't know everything on the map, unless you ask around. Which of course boils down to....

6. Communicate with your team actively

You must realize that your players (hopefully) are not bots or NPCs, and sometimes they don't know what you're thinking, and other times they won't agree with what you're doing. But this is fine. It's ideal to have some expectations of when to cooperate and not assume they will do the thing in your head.

This is not just in gaming, but also anything really. A lot of times people will write something that makes sense in their head but they left out half the details to the public and nobody knows what they're talking about. People aren't psychic and will not waste time playing 20 questions with you.

The good news is that if people know they can rely on you, then they're more likely to pay attention to your calls. The reverse is also true. If you keep spamming chat and people don't know wtf you're doing, then you will get ignored.

7. But most importantly, do not ragequit

So sometimes when a objective is captured and the blame game will start. Like, don't start crying in chat about how we would have kept it if they listened to you, and you are no longer doing this because you are not appreciated or something. Come on now, nobody cares. The minimum age to play this game is at least 13, so please act appropriately.

In the grand scheme of things, losing things is not the end of the world. In fact most objectives are meant to be flipped. Just work on what to do now instead of kittening over spilled milk. .

 

Edited March 17 by ArchonWing.9480

[Knighthonor.4061]

5 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Scouting is a very important job, and also an easy job.

If you want your team to respond faster then you need 3 pieces of information.

1. HOW MANY - Use an average if it's too much to count, if it's orange swords it's 25+, in which case you can say a zerg, if it gets to 40+ it's a blob. This is the most important piece of information for your team to respond appropriately, whether we need to send some roamers to a camp, or a zerg to a tower. This cannot and should not be the last piece of information you bother to provide, you want a fast response then put the numbers first or get ignored.

2. WHO DAT- Which side? color, or server name, or guild. Some guilds or server will get faster priority, some won't due to their reputations. Commanders need to know how much time they have to respond, especially if they're tied up in combat already.

3. LOCATION - And no, posting a LINK to the objective just because it has white swords doesn't cut it, if you're not there then ask for "Eyes on objective" so someone nearby can scout it. Many players will just ignore link calls with no additional information provided.

WHAT IS GOING ON - Do they have siege up? are they just killing siege on outer? are they just farting around farming roamers? Is there golems? do we have tactics?

WHAT YOU SHOULD LEARN - Use Outer and Inner as terms for keeps and smc, use Cardinal directions if multiple walls or gates are present such as in the keeps and smc. Use cardinal directions for calling out borderland objectives, no one remembers the names of three different borderland maps that have the same locations, and it's annoying to click on a link to check the location. It's pretty easy to say NC, NEC, NET, SWT, SWC, etc. Or if you're from Mag and went to Clouding College to learn calling WK instead of Bay, EK instead of Hills, NN instead of North Camp. Garrison has a couple special names, WG for watergate, murdergate for the lower west gate, and east gate cause it's the gate in the east..... duh! Or hills has Cata wall which means it's entire outer west wall, or for bay this usually means the south outer wall.

Saying something like "blue at smc" says absolutely nothing, it could be a roamer at east wall, or 3 people at sw wall, or 30 people at north outer gate, it's a giant objective, all the outer walls can be broken, it's has two north inner gates, so be specific on your calls. Saying "30+ blue garri wg 3 golems" or "20 green nw inner smc 2 rams" or "red zerg at net killing siege", is short and gives all the info everyone needs.

STOP BEING LAZY, THANK YOU FOR SCOUTING, AND HAVE A NICE DAY.

Thank you stalker for pointing out you're confused as usual. -->

Here the thing OP. Players Scouting get no Participation and reward for doing the hard work of relaying info and scouting for defense. Before you antagonize those players that take up the role, how about you push Anet to reward players that do this better than nearly nothing. Anything better than nothing. 

[XenesisII.1540]

1 minute ago, Knighthonor.4061 said:

Here the thing OP. Players Scouting get no Participation and reward for doing the hard work of relaying info and scouting for defense. Before you antagonize those players that take up the role, how about you push Anet to reward players that do this better than nearly nothing. Anything better than nothing. 

I scout and get participation just fine, you don't actually have to stand in an objective afk for two hours to "scout".

How about you push those players to spend their time better in wvw to earn rewards instead of asking for more afk hand outs.

[Knighthonor.4061]

5 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

I scout and get participation just fine, you don't actually have to stand in an objective afk for two hours to "scout".

How about you push those players to spend their time better in wvw to earn rewards instead of asking for more afk hand outs.

building defenses isnt standing around afk like you make it out to be. Takes effort to run supply while watching structures for defense. 

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

That's an EU problem, not NA.

and this forum is not NA exclusive. 

[XenesisII.1540]

1 minute ago, Knighthonor.4061 said:

building defenses isnt standing around afk like you make it out to be. Takes effort to run supply while watching structures for defense. 

Do these people not capture camps?

Do they not back cap stuff?

Do they not participate in fights of places they're scouting?

Do they not use the siege they're building to tag enemies for kills?

If there's a squad on the map do they not ask to get on the participation slot to scout for the squad?

Stop being lazy and waiting for hand outs?

[XenesisII.1540]

13 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

and this forum is not NA exclusive. 

I'm on NA therefore my post is directed to NA, I have no business with EU.

I have no idea on the unwritten scouting rules for EU.

You guys like to tell us NA to stop commenting on EU stuff like link problems if we're not in EU.

So I don't comment on EU stuff.

Feel free to make your own thread about EU scouting.

Thanks for being confused about a simple discussion. -->

Edited March 17 by XenesisII.1540

[Sugar Min.5834]

WAIT... scouts still exist in WvW ??!!!

We were doing it with no or very little participation rewards and yet when things went wrong, the tags/squads are always fast to point fingers at you. Never their fault.

Bleh.

[CafPow.1542]

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

scout and get participation just fine, you don't actually have to stand in an objective afk for two hours to "scout".

We sometimes have 1-2 scouts exclusively for bay and they would get no participation.

but since we are in a raid, those volunteers get the participation-thingy from the raid so yay.

also they get some gold from others extra sometimes for the gratitude ^^

 

but that’s ofc raid / zerg specific. Otherwise yeah, flip a camp or a ruin quick to remain t6 every few minutes.

Edited March 17 by CafPow.1542

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

I'm on NA therefore my post is directed to NA

But you never said that in the OP.

Just like a bad scouting report then.

[XenesisII.1540]

23 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But you never said that in the OP.

Just like a bad scouting report then.

EU is like eotm, don't need to pass along information there, and can ignore it completely.

[SweetPotato.7456]

only if I have shared participation and rewarded or else it will be "INCOMING"

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

EU is like eotm, don't need to pass along information there, and can ignore it completely.

No, telling people that don't speak English, that they should speak English, is definitely a priority on an English speaking forum that they are definitely going to  be bothering to read.

And it's not like we don't have Spanish speakers in NA too....

Edited March 17 by ArchonWing.9480

[Grave.5683]

Forgot the "Ask for shared participation" part.

A lot of the rant is because of each server community that isn't rewarding scouting ,you cant do much about the lemmings that just want to follow the tag and grab quick profit.

Also It doesn't help when on one side you have a veteran scout who can literally write you the entire schedule of the enemy driver plus the numbers plus the compo plus the psychological profile plus the account information of every spy the enemy driver is using ,and on the other side you have an abusive driver who ignores the calls and just delivers bags to SM because he thinks he is skilled.

And then there is the fact that the scout may not have the time to write it down due to holding off the attack solo and all he can do is  a ping.

 

Edited March 17 by Grave.5683

[Dadnir.5038]

I remember scouting in 2012/2013, I was paying for tower/keep/camp upgrade, paying for siege engine, defending alone (yeah that's the only monet I got a little something for my effort and it often ended up with getting thrown back to the rally point), warning allies...

It worked "alright" until may/june 2013 and then the bulk of WvW players called themself the "karma train", never to fight another "karma train" head on, making sure to recap the objectives once the invuln state wear down and telling the scout that they are just useless and that they are messing with their sweet karma hoarding trip.

To be received by insults and not gratitude from your allies. To invest without gains. To take on the task that other despise. You scouts are the true heros of WvW.

[Cuks.8241]

People still care for PPT?

[CutesySylveon.8290]

Another thing people forget is to use things like Disablers. I cannot count how many times we've had several defenders holding off an objective that refuse to use Disables, making mine extremely crucial because it could be what buys us enough time. 

This is also why I cannot stand Shield Generators because teams that chain bubbles with alacrity on siege with Ventari bubbles covering the Shield Gens is quite literally impossible to stop without a similar sized group.

But yes, use Painter Traps, Supply Traps, and Disables. They're extremely useful.

[Aeolus.3615]

Personally i hate scouting myself so i tend to drop some traps to spot groups near camps or near most mainstsream spots.

[Chaba.5410]

12 hours ago, Knighthonor.4061 said:

Here the thing OP. Players Scouting get no Participation and reward for doing the hard work of relaying info and scouting for defense. Before you antagonize those players that take up the role, how about you push Anet to reward players that do this better than nearly nothing. Anything better than nothing. 

Wait, relaying info is hard work and players need the game to reward them for doing it?

And here this whole time I thought that the bags from killing the attackers because info was relayed to teammates was the reward...

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

2 hours ago, CutesySylveon.8290 said:

Another thing people forget is to use things like Disablers. I cannot count how many times we've had several defenders holding off an objective that refuse to use Disables, making mine extremely crucial because it could be what buys us enough time. 

This is also why I cannot stand Shield Generators because teams that chain bubbles with alacrity on siege with Ventari bubbles covering the Shield Gens is quite literally impossible to stop without a similar sized group.

But yes, use Painter Traps, Supply Traps, and Disables. They're extremely useful.

They're useful, but disablers can be denied by some random dude with Aegis that got hit by it.