Guild Wars 2

I was recently visting the GW2 subreddit, when i stumbled upon this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4u260k/rant_about_dr/

Now vulgarity aside, i checked the GW2 wiki page, and found the following: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Diminishing_returns

What is upsetting is that if you like your character, and you are doing events to farm in-game materials and currency, you get less and less rewards per each successful/failed event after 10. (Note: Why would we even get rewards for a failed event??)

I understand this was done to detour bots. Good idea, but i’m sure there is a best practices handbook somewhere that reads: Don’t implement a system or technology that is going to hamper your users.

In spite of the map rewards, Silverwastes, and Dry Top farming that occurs currently in-game, where players will stay on the map for an average of 1-2 hours, can we possibly ‘up’ that DR time to 2 hours?

The impact on me personally is very low, as i have many, many toons, and can swap to each of them after any 10 events, but to newer players trying to establish a foot-hold in the game, i can’t imagine this is a very welcomed rule.

In the past, Square Enix tried a similar rule with the first version of Final Fantasy 14: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Fatigue_System

They further realized the folly in this system, and subsequently removed it: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2011-07-14/fatigue_system_removed_from_final_fantasy_14.shtml

Granted experience =/= in-game rewards, but with the sheer amount of rewards needed to achieve some of the higher goals in the game, it just seems silly to keep this rule in place. Given, that rewards and materials are needed to fuel the player in the end-game.

I humbly request that this policy be re-reviewed, and changed as to benefit those players that are putting 2 hours a night or day into any given zone. Please advise.

I think the OP in the reddit thread doesn’t understand the impact of botting on the economy. As others explained in that thread, loosening the rules a little benefits botters a lot more than ordinary players and hardcore farmers.

As an example, AB multi-loot is a farming mode without diminishing returns. It has had a huge impact on the economy, so huge that there have been several posts from players demanding it be nerfed (I’m not one of those players and I apologize if I triggerd anywhere into feeling the need to comment on AB multiloot instead of on DR).

DR is set up to protect the community in much the same way that other anti-RMT measures do: by throttling chat, mail, gold transfers, and yes, rewards (from kills or events), the impact is reduced. It’s a compromise between allowing players total freedom (which allows the same for botters) and more draconian restrictions (getting kicked, losing all rewards, being unable to change zones or characters).

tl;dr DR is probably going to be here to stay, because it provides substantial protection to the overall economy, and therefore to the vast majority of players.

I think it’s highly unlikely new players trying to establish a foothold in the game are ever going to encounter diminishing returns. You have to stay in the same area and do literally the same event/kill the same enemies for hours at a time before it kicks in.

I’ve personally done Silverwastes from start (0/4 forts) to finish twice in a row on the same map without hitting it. In fact in almost 4 years of playing this game the only times I have noticed it were once when I was in the Mad Kings Labyrinth, going in a circle doing door events for about 3 hours and once when I was farming candy corn elementals (using the balm) – turning the same 9 ambients into elementals, killing them and waiting for them to respawn in a very small area.

It’s very controversial but in my experience a lot of that comes from players not actually understanding it. If they get silver reward on an event, or get a champion bag that’s lower than exotic rarity, or have a bad run on the mystic forge they’ll blame it on DR even though none of those things are actually affected by it.

As the Wiki says when it does kick in the results are dramatic. For example when I was in the Labyrinth it was literally within minutes I went from getting multiple trick-or-treat bags and greens and blues from every door event to getting literally nothing but grey text junk items, and only 2-3 of those. (Although even then it was only when I saw I wasn’t getting karma as an event reward that I realised it was DR and not just bad luck.)

In short I don’t think it’s ever going to be a problem for the vast majority of players and when it is the solution is simple – you’ll have been in the same location doing the same thing for several hours so it’s a hint that it’s time to take a break. Take your character out of the map and go do something different for a bit – even if it’s just going to a city to clear your bags out and collect your TP profits.

@Danikat, i see your point. However, without clear guidelines from the company that imposed them, its very difficult to see where the limits are. Lastnight, i was on FGS for about 45 minutes, and began to notice that i was getting less and less karma per event. Add to this, that map chat was carrying on about DR, and you can see how easy it is to mistake everyday bad RNG, with a system that may be in place and causing the issue.

However, since that reddit post was created, its done a fine job of creating awareness, that even a 2.5 year player wasn’t aware of. This being the case, it now only adds more challenge to the game, in that i now have to farm on seperate toons after i begin to notice the DR kicking in.

I think a 2 hour limit, confirmed by Arena Net would work wonders in this instance. Its better to know what your limits are, instead of wasting time after you’ve surpassed them.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I think the OP in the reddit thread doesn’t understand the impact of botting on the economy. As others explained in that thread, loosening the rules a little benefits botters a lot more than ordinary players and hardcore farmers.

As an example, AB multi-loot is a farming mode without diminishing returns. It has had a huge impact on the economy, so huge that there have been several posts from players demanding it be nerfed (I’m not one of those players and I apologize if I triggerd anywhere into feeling the need to comment on AB multiloot instead of on DR).

DR is set up to protect the community in much the same way that other anti-RMT measures do: by throttling chat, mail, gold transfers, and yes, rewards (from kills or events), the impact is reduced. It’s a compromise between allowing players total freedom (which allows the same for botters) and more draconian restrictions (getting kicked, losing all rewards, being unable to change zones or characters).

tl;dr DR is probably going to be here to stay, because it provides substantial protection to the overall economy, and therefore to the vast majority of players.

@Ill – I do understand. I’ve played multiple MMOs over the years, and have seen first hand, the damage they can do. Make no mistake, i’m not asking for DR to be removed. I’m simply asking for clarification, and the understanding that players – NOT bots – do play maps for 1-2 hours at a time. Some even longer, but only ANet would know the actual averages and metrics on this. Everyone i know, happens to stick around for 1-2 hours, and i figure thats fairly normal. Where bots would spend unlimited hours on farming.

What hangs me up even more on this, is the following statements on the wiki page:

“Again, ArenaNet will not offer the details of how it works and some of the mechanics changed with the release of Heart of Thorns”

“It also applies to completing multiple events within a single map in core Tyria. However, there’s less agreement about whether it’s the events, an amount of time spent on the map, or the value of Map Bonus Rewards. It also appears to be variable, triggering with as few as 10 events or 30-45 minutes of time spent doing events.”

“There is no consensus about how to clear Map DR; some believe it requires an equivalent amount of time spent in another map, some think it requires doing a number of events elsewhere, and others think it only clears with server reset.”

“Both event and map DR set in quickly once triggered. It is easy to see its effects by comparing the amount of karma or XP, as well as the absence any boss chests or a decrease of other rewards.”

Even at the current level, it could be assumed that botters could easily level up multiple toons and simply switch them when the rewards threshold was lowered, right?

But on another note, i’ve yet to run across any botters, and i’ve seen many of them in games like FFXIV.

Furthermore, without anything official from the devs, it stands to let the philosophy meander, that this could be another system in place to promote more gem-to-gold transactions.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/please-delete-14/page/16#post4567605

I wonder what the chances are to get an update on this.

I don’t understand your objections to ANet being mysterious about how DR works. If they explain it, that benefits botters (since they can easily program around it) and hurts ordinary players (since they have to work harder to do so).

Also, don’t assume that because you don’t see botters that they aren’t there. Botters might be more visible in FF14 because the mods aren’t as quick to remove them or less visible in GW2 because they know where to go to keep from getting reported.

Finally, if ANet wanted to promote more gem-to-gold transactions, there are dozens of more efficient ways to do so, a lot of which would not annoy players as much as DR does.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t understand your objections to ANet being mysterious about how DR works. If they explain it, that benefits botters (since they can easily program around it) and hurts ordinary players (since they have to work harder to do so).

Also, don’t assume that because you don’t see botters that they aren’t there. Botters might be more visible in FF14 because the mods aren’t as quick to remove them or less visible in GW2 because they know where to go to keep from getting reported.

Finally, if ANet wanted to promote more gem-to-gold transactions, there are dozens of more efficient ways to do so, a lot of which would not annoy players as much as DR does.

I’m coming from the standpoint that most ever other MMO that i’ve played, details out what drops for doing certain challenges. Its kind of a universal thing to communicate to your users that if kill monster A, you get loot B. It may not be verbose, in-game, but they do it with more subtle hints, such as “bear drops leather or fur, because it is a bear, that has leather or fur on it’s person”. Or, “Raid Boss X is guaranteed to drop one exotic item per kill”. Again, may not be verbose in-game, but once someone kills it, most everyone knows that if you want that exotic item, if you have to go kill “Raid Boss X”. My point with that, is that in some fashion/method/way, we are implicitly told what to expect.

Honestly, and again, all i want is a simple yes or no on if i go farm events on a map, that i’m not going to hit DR in 2 hours, which i saw lastnight, and i wasn’t even in FGS for 2 hours, but it was the same 5-6 events. If those events are means to obtain items i need to craft end game materials, then yes, it is vitally important to know what my limits are, so that i can either work around them, or find some other method to obtain them.

If botters are botting, then chances are they’ve known the limits far longer than what we have. In knowing this, you may have a point in that i should probably be asking them. Does that sound right? It doesn’t to me.

slamfunction.7462:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t understand your objections to ANet being mysterious about how DR works. If they explain it, that benefits botters (since they can easily program around it) and hurts ordinary players (since they have to work harder to do so).

Also, don’t assume that because you don’t see botters that they aren’t there. Botters might be more visible in FF14 because the mods aren’t as quick to remove them or less visible in GW2 because they know where to go to keep from getting reported.

Finally, if ANet wanted to promote more gem-to-gold transactions, there are dozens of more efficient ways to do so, a lot of which would not annoy players as much as DR does.

I’m coming from the standpoint that most ever other MMO that i’ve played, details out what drops for doing certain challenges. Its kind of a universal thing to communicate to your users that if kill monster A, you get loot B. It may not be verbose, in-game, but they do it with more subtle hints, such as “bear drops leather or fur, because it is a bear, that has leather or fur on it’s person”. Or, “Raid Boss X is guaranteed to drop one exotic item per kill”. Again, may not be verbose in-game, but once someone kills it, most everyone knows that if you want that exotic item, if you have to go kill “Raid Boss X”. My point with that, is that in some fashion/method/way, we are implicitly told what to expect.

Honestly, and again, all i want is a simple yes or no on if i go farm events on a map, that i’m not going to hit DR in 2 hours, which i saw lastnight, and i wasn’t even in FGS for 2 hours, but it was the same 5-6 events. If those events are means to obtain items i need to craft end game materials, then yes, it is vitally important to know what my limits are, so that i can either work around them, or find some other method to obtain them.

If botters are botting, then chances are they’ve known the limits far longer than what we have. In knowing this, you may have a point in that i should probably be asking them. Does that sound right? It doesn’t to me.

I still don’t understand why it’s a good strategy for ANet to explain clearly how DR works. It undermines the utility of the tool (which is problematic at its most efficient, as many have noted, including myself). Sure, botters are going to dope out some of the limits more quickly than players, but that itself makes them more vulnerable to bot-detection tools.

The most efficient DR is as arcane as possible, changes as often as possible, and only hits “ordinary players” involved in single-tactic-intensive farming (which is always going to hard to distinguish from botting). GW2’s DR is somewhat arcane, doesn’t seem to change that often, and probably hits some ordinary players too often — it’s definitely imperfect.

However, I doubt that the best way to combat DR and reduce punishing the wrong people is going to be by removing one of the cornerstones of the strategy.

DR is ineffective, and only punishes honest players. There has been plenty of evidence over the years to prove that DR does nothing to stop botters.

Botters spend so much time doing their thing that it would be a simple task for the creators to look at data to know exactly when DR hits. In fact they probably know just as much about DR as Anet does. So they simply adjust their bot programs to take advantage of it. The result is that the only people who are hurt by DR are the normal player base.

Neural.1824:

DR is ineffective, and only punishes honest players. There has been plenty of evidence over the years to prove that DR does nothing to stop botters.

Botters spend so much time doing their thing that it would be a simple task for the creators to look at data to know exactly when DR hits. In fact they probably know just as much about DR as Anet does. So they simply adjust their bot programs to take advantage of it. The result is that the only people who are hurt by DR are the normal player base.

Maybe what you fail to realize is that is ANet likely knows it’s not going to stop botters.

Maybe they try to keep botters out and make it harder for them to succeed to reduce their effect on the game.

Neural.1824:

DR is ineffective, and only punishes honest players. There has been plenty of evidence over the years to prove that DR does nothing to stop botters.

I haven’t seen any such evidence. What I’ve seen is that botting has less of an impact in GW2 than it has in other games and that when ANet slacks off on anti-botting tools, including DR, the economy is affected.

Neural.1824:

Botters spend so much time doing their thing that it would be a simple task for the creators to look at data to know exactly when DR hits. In fact they probably know just as much about DR as Anet does.

They probably do know a lot about how it works, although it’s very unlikely it’s as much as ANet. It’s almost certainly more than we regular players know.

Neural.1824:

So they simply adjust their bot programs to take advantage of it.

Yes, they do. And that makes them more vulnerable to bot-detection techniques — since regular players aren’t likely to be as efficient at consistently avoiding DR.

Neural.1824:

The result is that the only people who are hurt by DR are the normal player base.

Again, where’s your evidence that this is true?

It doesn’t help ANet for ordinary players to suffer through anti-gold selling techniques. We complain about message suppression, about limits on gold transfers, about DR, etc. It would be far, far easier on ANet to make us happier by reducing the throttles on our ability to play whatever, whenever, within the game’s other mechanics.

The fact that they put this much energy into these systems is indirect evidence that it has an impact on botting and gold selling. Other indirect evidence is the relative value of dollars-to-gems-to-gold via ANet (or authorized gem cards) versus the black market.

There’s no question that gaming companies have to make tradeoffs between our convenience and protecting the game. DR is just one of many such tools that gaming companies use and that we love to hate.

@Ill: No one is asking to turn it off here, and allow botters to run rampant. In no way am I asking this. What i’m asking for is clarification on how it works, AND if they can’t provide that, can they confirm that it won’t affect players playing in a map for an approximate limit of 2 hours. Thats all.

I’ve personally noticed DR hitting twice.

Once was when I was trying to farm low level crafting mats from centaur loot bags. I noticed it kicking in after about 10 minutes and reaching almost complete lockdown by 20. The result was that I stopped that and made a level 50 bag-opening salvage alt instead. I find it poetic that by controlling one loot system, they push players into exploiting another. Figures.

The second time is in Silverwastes. If you chain events at a single fort (defense > wall > repeat > etc) you’ll start hitting DR about halfway to VW. Watch the karma reward numbers. This is one of several reasons (although not the main one, to be fair) that people now do SW in a rotation, instead of staying with events until they finish. Again, by overcontrolling one system, they simply pushed people to exploit another. I’ve even seen bots that do the SW rotation, so it hasn’t done anything for it’s intended goal of stopping bots either.

On balance, I think DR is obsolete and useless and takes away more then it helps.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

…when ANet slacks off on anti-botting tools, including DR, the economy is affected.

Speaking of demanding evidence… Do you have some insider information that proves Anet has “slacked off” on Diminishing Returns?

The evidence I look at is that A) Players are affected by DR, and There are still plenty of bots.

And no, bots making adjustments to avoid DR will not make them more detectable. That is a fantasy. The kind of adjustments they make to accommodate DR would likely make them harder to detect. Instead of running mindlessly in a circle, they farm for 20minutes, then teleport via waypoint to a different map, go to a location, and farm there. Automatically. Only now they look even more like legitimate players.

slamfunction.7462:

@Ill: No one is asking to turn it off here, and allow botters to run rampant. In no way am I asking this. What i’m asking for is clarification on how it works, AND if they can’t provide that, can they confirm that it won’t affect players playing in a map for an approximate limit of 2 hours. Thats all.

People are asking to turn it off (perhaps not you — I apologize if that was implied by what I wrote).

However, I still cannot imagine that ANet is going to explain or even clarify how it works — one of the value of the system is that it’s impossible for the botters to know all the details or how often they might change, in major or minor ways. As I mentioned, the fact that botters likely know more than we do means that they are vulnerable to be spotting being “too good” at avoiding DR.

That said, I would prefer that ANet do their own explaining as to why they use DR and what sort of impact it has. (They could, for example, talk about something long enough in the past that it won’t hurt current anti-botting tools.)

If I’m correct and it’s in the best interest of the game, the community, and MMOs in general, it’s worth ANet’s time to help players to understand why it’s worth putting up with.

This afternoon, i noticed that after 10 events in FGS, my karma reward dropped significantly on the 11th event. I noticed that map rewards and and loot, began dropping off after the 20th champ kill. Thats about 30-45 minutes in FGS, with a champ train.

At this point, my only conclusion is that the map reward system they created for core Tyria is an illusion, and the only real way to farm a decent amount of rewards is in the HoT areas. However, there is no sure fire way to farm the exact mats that you need, such as Powerful Blood, or Wicked Claws.

This is disappointing, but if you have multiple characters, its more the inconvenience of jumping to a different character, and continuing your farm, than anything else. If a simpleton like me was able to casually notice this, and realize the smoke’n’mirrors behind the scenes, i’m sure that people brazen enough to write and run bots have a more accurate image of how the system really works.

If my results are indeed true, i think the system needs to be reviewed.

I also did some further research on this subject, and found that there were a few conversations on it, over the last 4 years. The official/initial reply was (2012): https://www.engadget.com/2012/10/04/arenanet-offers-explanation-for-guild-wars-2s-diminishing-retur/

Others noticed this issue as well, brought it up, it was debated, and no follow up from the developers was ever made:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1awper/can_we_discuss_and_demystify_diminishing_returns/

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/68826-the-dr-controversy/

I know Arena Net is trying to communicate with us more, and i sincerely appreciate the effort, and what they’ve done to change their history with the fanbase, but i honestly feel that this is still a very hot subject that needs more definition, or some sort of update.

Will it stop fans from playing the game? No.

Will it stop newer players hitting the cap, and trying to put together the gears needed for fractals and raids? Most definitely.

Does this system indirectly cause anyone determined enough, to use the gem-to-gold transaction system in order to create the gear they need? For those who can afford it, yes. For those who can’t, they’ll most likely drift off to other games with lesser time requirements, and easier to achieve goals.

Does there need to be system in place to stop botters? YES!!!

Does there need to be a system in place to stop everyday players who play on a map for an average amount of time? NO!!!

In the end, this thread won’t be answered. The question will be forgotten. And this will be yet another google result that someone will pull up and read through to come to the same results i did, and realize that they A. Need to quit the game, or B. Spend more money on gems to outright buy whatever they need from the TP.

You missed the Dev responses here on the forums.

I’ve only ever been affected by DR once, that I can recall. It was during the old Queensdale Champ train. Not even last year, or the year before running the Labyrinth.

Not sure what triggers it for some.

slamfunction.7462:

In the end, this thread won’t be answered.

Because, in effect, it has been. A formal dev response won’t change what others have said in the other threads.

• DR is an important tool in combating gold sellers (and their sources of wealth)
• It works partly because we don’t know most of the details.
• It affects fewer players than most of us think.
• If game companies could, they would avoid using it.

slamfunction.7462:

The question will be forgotten.

Well, sure. The community changes, the development team members (and leaders, upper management) change, too. It’s worth bringing up from time to time.

slamfunction.7462:

and realize that they A. Need to quit the game, or B. Spend more money on gems to outright buy whatever they need from the TP.

That’s a weird thing to say after all this. Sure, if you aren’t having fun, then not playing is a sensible option. However, there are so many ways to earn wealth in this game, it seems like a gross exaggeration that the only choices are quit or open a RL wallet. I know that no one I play with has done that (neither the regulars nor the occasionals).

I get that you don’t like DR (does anyone?). I get that it’s annoying that ANet refuses to explain the details, even if there are reasons (good or otherwise). However, that doesn’t mean you have to cut off your gaming to spite your game. Try other farms, swap toons, do something else for a bit.

Since any gold farmer worth anything knows how to work around DR, why not just have a visual notice that you are being affected by it so people can swap characters? You can see that the karma is right down while farming events, but you can’t really tell how DR is affecting you. Someone who is farming with bots for a living IRL, already knows exactly what to do to maximize profit.

If someone is using automation or botting, its likely they are not monitoring the screen constantly to know when to swap characters to reset their DR or when their character DR for map rewards will reset, so why not help legitimate players?

I just had a thought that if they just added the reward track progress to the mini map like in HoT for the core game maps, then you can just call the map rewards the daily map bonus. So its just displaying the progress on the reward track for you to see, just like HoT/WvW participation and rewards. Once the bar fills up, it is greyed out with a timer like the Ectoplasm Refinement crafting items.

I reckon that would work a treat.

A significant part of this is the games clear intent to provide rewards designed not for your main, but for your alts. Simple acts like logging in and Daily Achievements directly hand to us new levels and gear clearly designed to help us level and outfit all our characters.
This by itself enables us to play legitimately without suffering from DR while making it difficult for botters. I think this is a good system and while awareness is important, I really don’t want anymore screen clutter, no matter how helpful.
If you love your main character that much, simply duplicate it with your alts, and use them when DR becomes an issue.

If DR was actually meant to combat botting, there would probably be some kind of a CAPTCHA system in place.

At the moment, it only seems to combat farming the same thing over and over again, why they wish to restrict such activities is a mystery to me, tho.

A botter will just log in another character if the rewards are lucrative enough, someone who is actually selling gold to players with his bots owns probably around 100 accounts or more full of 80s.

I am with you. Diminishing returns does not “safeguard” against economic failures. This is especially true in games like this where the economy is so variable because of insurmountable production of resources and coin at the same time. Players are smart enough to rotate accounts so there’s no reason that dishonest individuals wouldn’t be at least two steps ahead of the honest players. In that respect DR is completely ineffective. It would only be effective if you could only have one account.

Tiilimon.6094:

If DR was actually meant to combat botting, there would probably be some kind of a CAPTCHA system in place.

At the moment, it only seems to combat farming the same thing over and over again, why they wish to restrict such activities is a mystery to me, tho.

A botter will just log in another character if the rewards are lucrative enough, someone who is actually selling gold to players with his bots owns probably around 100 accounts or more full of 80s.

Exactly. What is to say that a botter is not running 100 free accounts at once, multi-boxing, and taking up an entire shard of FGS to farm map rewards themselves? Having free accounts made DR even more of a hindrance to legitimate players because someone who cares only about generating profit to sell can have as many as they care to create and there is zero penalty for them to be caught except lose a small amount of time it takes to create another account.

Umm.. Stop repeating the same stuff 24/7? I never had any noticeable issue with DR. Event success/fail reward barely is worth anything so I really don’t see the issue here.

Bambu.4270:

Umm.. Stop repeating the same stuff 24/7? I never had any noticeable issue with DR. Event success/fail reward barely is worth anything so I really don’t see the issue here.

Well, mate you are just not paying attention. Map reward DR kicks in after just 17 events and karma DR will be pretty close to that as well, not many more after that your loot quality drops right off.

Also, we are not talking about the miniscule amount of silver you get for the actual event reward, we are talking about map rewards for doing events, for instance this week in FGS the rewards are Powerful Blood and Charged Lodestones/Giant Eyes, so thats between 40s-1.4g per event on average, just from that reward.

Surely, one that’s worried about farming a map has more than 1 character that can handle Frostgorge; should not be too difficult to change characters every 16-17 events.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Surely, one that’s worried about farming a map has more than 1 character that can handle Frostgorge; should not be too difficult to change characters every 16-17 events.

Hit DR on 10 characters today.

What I want to know is whats the point of having to change characters? If someone is botting with F2P accounts, they have essentially unlimited accounts and characters to swap to, so its no hindrance to them at all. So why make me swap to a unique toon every 17 events and only be able to use that toon once per day for that map?