Guild Wars 2

Anet’s position, as I read it, means that as long as you are using mechanics that are a part of the game itself you are fine. You are fine because the autoloot mechanic combined with pets and other passive damage is a logical outcome of those two features used together. There is no need to clarify their policy because they have already stated that (1) this is fine when you are using the masteries and traits, (2) this produces unintended outcomes that need to be addressed on their end. Anet is not seriously concerned—if they were they would have disabled autoloot until they patched in a fix.

This is a design issue and does not mean that Anet is not ultimately concerned with addressing this natural outcome. AFK farming is obviously not what Anet intended to enable or promote when it introduced autoloot into the game. That said, Anet has relatively few options that will address this consequence.

One option is to make mobs more like HoT mobs. If active defense is required to mitigate the damage, if the mobs will switch targets, if the mobs heal (or are healed by other npcs), etc. then there are fewer opportunities for the person to afk. The issue is that other active players can compensate for this to a certain extent.

Another option is to implement a faster time-out for players that are sitting without moving their character. The issue is that if you make this timer too short it would kick players who merely walked away for a few minutes. There is, however, a balance to be struck here. Honestly, I think this option is the more likely scenario. Ten minutes of sitting without using skills or moving—and you get kicked to character select. You could also have this disabled in certain “safe areas” including cities and settlements that don’t have events.

Just for pointed out, a friend has been banned for a few hours. The reason was afk farming, as a necro with pets, during hours.

I don’t think it’s allowed then.

saerni.2584:

Another option is to implement a faster time-out for players that are sitting without moving their character. The issue is that if you make this timer too short it would kick players who merely walked away for a few minutes. There is, however, a balance to be struck here. Honestly, I think this option is the more likely scenario. Ten minutes of sitting without using skills or moving—and you get kicked to character select. You could also have this disabled in certain “safe areas” including cities and settlements that don’t have events.

Another “save area” would have to be where World Bosses spawn. It’s pretty common practice to port early to a world boss, and just wait until it spawns.

I think another alternative would be to disable the ability to set heal to auto-cast. Heck, perhaps extend this to include utilities and elites, too. Does anyone play with their auto-cast on heal/utility/elites?

~EW

Maybe your friend is lying you about the ban and wasn’t. Maybe your friend is lying you about the why was banned and is not just been afk but using a 3rd part program. Maybe…
Each case is particular.
Hope they marge this, about 3 treads about this (resolved and answered by ANet) thing and 2 in the first page atm.

Leon de Damasco.8105:

Maybe your friend is lying you about the ban and wasn’t. Maybe your friend is lying you about the why was banned and is not just been afk but using a 3rd part program. Maybe…
Each case is particular.
Hope they marge this, about 3 treads about this (resolved and answered by ANet) thing and 2 in the first page atm.

Nope. Got proof with the advert & mail on my guild facebook page. I can’t share it here since it’s not allowed. The ban was more like a warning.

Anyway, if you use a 3rd party program it’s not a few hours but 6 months of ban.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Harper.4173:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

Ayrilana.1396:

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

Ayrilana.1396:

Robles.7458:

3 years ago, we didn´t have a mastery to take the items so if people were farming afk, they had to use bots.

Moreover, statements change with time. Some months ago, they were going to release a full set of legendaries, but they changed their mind. We shouldn´t use a post which is 3 years old to say what is forbidden or not.

Just because things have the potential to change over time doesn’t mean that Anet needs to state their stances every week, month year, decade, etc. They have a stance. Unless they indicate that it has changed, it hasn’t.

I don’t like afk farming and I hope anet finds a way to stop it, that disclaimer aside….

… The problem is that the rule you speak of was put in place when only 3rd party software could loot for an afk farmer. That has changed, and now we have the ability to auto loot clarification of the previous statement is needed, particularly when one of the developers made a contradictory statement about pet/minion mechanics being used to gain loot in unintended ways not being considered as an exploit. There are plenty of exploits that anet has fixed, I don’t see why they’d let this hang out there and not address it further because they addressed a similar concept 3 years ago. They need to clarify if they consider this an disallowed exploit.

They don’t need to clarify. Their statement is pretty simply as it is. Back around launch, there were people who did this to level their characters.

Obviously, they do need to clarify, see all the people that are confused? That means they need clarification. People ask for clarification, that means they need clarification, you don’t get to decide what others need clarified for them.

Particularly since no action has been taken against players that do this even though they’ve been reported repeatedly

It’s not obvious to me that we “need” clarification. ANet has definitively stated again and again that it’s not okay to abuse game mechanics, that it’s not okay to gain rewards while AFK.

Players spin ANet statements to mean whatever they like and folks who want to believe that they get more with less effort are inclined to believe that. No amount of clarification is going to change that innately human behavior. (It’s the same thing that allows politicians to get away with promising the moon and delivering a photocopy of a painting of the moon.)

You’re right – but define afk.

There is no definition I can provide that is going to prevent absolutely everyone from using it to justify their current actions.

Put another way, let’s suppose ANet releases yet another clarification about the policy. How many people do you think are going to change their current behavior? How many will go, “oh, right, that’s really clear now — I didn’t realize that when I was leaving my character sit for hours while I watched a move and occasionally rez’d them that someone might think I was exploiting a game mechanic.”

The vast majority of players don’t play in a way that a clarification matters. The vast majority of the rest are sufficiently informed by the current phrasing. Some of the rest won’t change their behavior regardless (except to perhaps try to make it harder to be detected). That leaves a really tiny fraction of people that might be affected by ANet issuing another statement.

tl;dr ANet could restate the policy, but (a) they don’t have to and (b) it probably won’t matter much if they do. If you think there’s an individual exploiting minion/pet mechanics, /report them and let ANet deal with it — if they find themselves getting too many reports, they’ll make appropriate adjustments.

And I feel Anet as a company owes it to that small portion of the player base to clarify the issue.
I’m part of that minority – and while I don’t participate in this particular “farm” there have been situations in the past(see CoF mastery farm) where we’ve wanted a clear-cut answer because believe it or not – my account matters to me.
I have over 4k hours on it – I’d say it’s a huge investment on my part.

So yes – I would like for them to reduce these “gray areas” as much as possible – especially since formulating and issuing a statement isn’t exactly the pinnacle of difficulty.

I mean – they already have an official internal mechanism through which they handle these – it’s not like I’m asking them to put in the extra work of figuring out how to handle these cases.
All I’m asking is that it’s made clear where that line between “you’re ok” and “you’re exploiting – enjoy your ban” is drawn.