Guild Wars 2

I am just wondering, what is ArenaNet’s official take on Griefing players? Players that for instance intentionaly kill ambient mobs to prevent your farm? It does get frustrating often having no options against them….

Pretty sure there was at least one incident in which one player was specifically targeting people trying to use maize balm by following them around killing the ambients, even trying to follow to other map instances.
If I remember correctly the person was unresponsive even when a GM/Mod came to investigate, and the player was eventually banned for griefing.

Griefing is against the ToS, and is a bannable offense if the person is indeed griefing, though they do not ban lightly.

Best thing you can do is video the person in action doing it, capture yourself making attempts to make peace/compromise with the person, and when they refuse/continue griefing send the video to support with as much info as you can.
They do take it seriously, but are not omniscient (the don’t watch every player 24/7 aside from a few automated anti cheat/bot mechanisms), they need reports and actual evidence of the griefing.

To address some of the other comments, no, Vilyo does not own the mobs, however neither does the other party, if someone else is there farming first he has no right to try to disrupt Vilyo’s farming or drive him off. That street goes both ways.
The other player agreed to ToS that said he agreed not to deliberately disrupt other peoples play, which IF he is just chasing Vilyo around to kill the ambients Vilyo is trying to farm then that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Played since day 1, never encountered such players. Small question, why do you farm ambient mobs?

If you think the characters are botting then report them.

Otherwise a player has every right to kill anything they please. Are they following you around and decimating a mob before you have a chance to hit? I have no idea what is going on from your description.

Also I am not sure how new you are, but has no concept of “killstealing”. So long as you get one hit on a creature you get full credit and a chance for loot. There is no exclusivity to XP/Loot and nor is XP/Loot split. You would both get full credit!

this situation is ambiguous without more information and you’d need to give more information for us to say. Where were you farming for example and is it the same person or people passing through who kill and leave.

For example, if you are doing the farm at the heart in Bloodtide where killing ambients is part of the heart, that might be people getting the heart, not people griefing you.

Make the griefers unwittingly work for you. Rather than fighting them for your mobs, just stand still and pretend to be afk. They’ll train all the mobs to you. It works, seriously.

Edit: Oh, ambient mobs. You’re kind of SoL there.

ferdi.1452:

Played since day 1, never encountered such players. Small question, why do you farm ambient mobs?

People either do it to farm candy corn elementals to get trick or treat bags(an item that you throw on enemies to turn them into candy corn elementals), or to easily get some of the weapon achievements like shield mastery.

As long as the person isn’t following you specifically map to map, I’m not sure Anet would consider it griefing. They might be trying to get weapon kills in the same spot.

ferdi.1452:

Played since day 1, never encountered such players. Small question, why do you farm ambient mobs?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Maize_Balm

That is why. They convert ambients into lootable creatures.

As for the OP, the stance is that players are allowed to kill ambients, and in some zones required for heart completion.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Slayer#Indiscriminate_Slayer

However, should one or both parties become abusive in chat/whispers that is an actionable offense that can be/should be reported.

I also played from day 1 and met quite a few players like these, and in spirit of full disclosure, farming ambients using vials of maize balms… basicly transforming ambients into candy corns to farm bags…. and you need 3 ambients close to each other for it to be worth it…. and there are only few spots that offer that, and often when other players come and see you farming they just start killing ambients effectively shutting down ur farm and by that griefing, had quite a few come around saying “no farm for you” and killing all the ambients or even sometimes killing the mobs before i manage to tag them.

i understand the weapon slayer achivements and respect the ones that do it and often sugest other spots and people listen and often move, im talking about ppl that intentionaly kill ambients only because the spot is taken and they themself cant farm because i am there

You don’t own those mobs, so they are most certainly not “yours”.

Everyone has a legitimate right to kill/tag any mobs they see in the game.

There was a particular known case last year of a player griefing an Anet employee during the ToT farm, basically the farm consisted of converting ambient life to candy corn elementals and getting bags from them.

This particular player was running around killing ambient life, and though there were attempts of putting him on a different map, he’d manage to get back to his original map to grief.

Said player was banned because of it, not sure for how long, but he was banned for griefing, personally in my 3 years of playtime I’ve never had anyone intentionally griefing me, or seen someone grief someone else.

If they say something to you that indicates they are doing it on purpose to grief you, you can report them. I suggest you also try to change maps to get to a map shard that they are not on. (You can try to do this by guesting to another server. Guesting will put you on another shard if that server is on that shard. It’s a hit or miss thing though, doesn’t always work.)

Frankly, I don’t consider that to be griefing.

thank you all for replying

Sorry OP, not much recourse unless you can prove with video that he is targeting you and all that… my suggestion is to log on to another toon for 5 mins and manage your inventory or something, then come back to your other character as the likelyhood of him not being there will be good, as will your chances of just loading into another instance of the map altogether.

I’m not sure if Scribe’s story is totally accurate.

The story I read (when it happened) was that the guy griefing in Rata Sum got moved by a moderator to a different map instance (so everybody could kill their own ambients) and was told to “cease and desist”. He purposely tried to re-enter and grief the original map with the maize-balm farmers, which went against the Mod’s direction, which was why he was banned/suspended.

So, OP:

I would personally consider purposefully interrupting such a farm as “griefing” or trolling. If it’s done by accident then the farmers probably won’t mind, but if a player is hanging around for long periods then the intent is fairly obvious- the griefer is there simply to annoy and upset the other players.

No mobs are owned by one group of people over the other, so other players are absolutely allowed to kill them and won’t get banned for it. To get punished, there needs to be another aspect of it that is punishable.
E.g. If the farmers moved to another instance and the interrupter “tracked them down”, then I would argue that that is considered stalking/harassment
If the trolls were jibing at them and egging the farmers on, then the troll could get punished for verbal abuse
If a mod moved the troll and they didn’t follow the mod’s orders, the troll would be punished

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Pretty sure there was at least one incident in which one player was specifically targeting people trying to use maize balm by following them around killing the ambients, even trying to follow to other map instances.
If I remember correctly the person was unresponsive even when a GM/Mod came to investigate, and the player was eventually banned for griefing.

Griefing is against the ToS, and is a bannable offense if the person is indeed griefing, though they do not ban lightly.

Best thing you can do is video the person in action doing it, capture yourself making attempts to make peace/compromise with the person, and when they refuse/continue griefing send the video to support with as much info as you can.
They do take it seriously, but are not omniscient (the don’t watch every player 24/7 aside from a few automated anti cheat/bot mechanisms), they need reports and actual evidence of the griefing.

To address some of the other comments, no, Vilyo does not own the mobs, however neither does the other party, if someone else is there farming first he has no right to try to disrupt Vilyo’s farming or drive him off. That street goes both ways.
The other player agreed to ToS that said he agreed not to deliberately disrupt other peoples play, which IF he is just chasing Vilyo around to kill the ambients Vilyo is trying to farm then that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Pretty sure the incident your on about was a player not too long after the Balm was introduced into the game that was killing the respawning ambients in Rata Sun before they were nerfed.. that player iirc wasn’t banned but simply moved out of the instance by ANET.. I have never heard of anyone being banned for killing ambients -

Ambient critter killing is legit because their is a shiny little achievement for it created by ANET, add to that there are weapon master achievements to also attain and guess what, the best places to get these achievements done just so happens to be the same places you like to play Candy Corn Wars and at least one of those farm spots is also a legit heart quest.

Bottom line is farmers don’t own map space and neither do the ambient slayers.. but I can’t ever recall a player killing ambients getting toxic cos the farmers are intruding on some perceived land claim rights.

L2Share I say and move on.

Looked it up, he was suspended, not banned, so I was close but not entirely accurate.
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2l21xk/actually_game_master_can_ban_for_preventing_maize/

Anet Comment clarifying:
“Just going to clear this up…

GM was called to the situation after multiple reports filed from a players for Griefing.
Player’s client language was set to English
Player received multiple warnings via Whisper (Whisper) in English
Player was moved from the map and placed in a different instance of the map (in case they were actually farming something useful rather than griefing)
Player attempted multiple times to zone back into this specific version of the map, eventually was successful
Returned to previous behavior
An attempt was made to make sure that the GM got this player’s attention
After attempting to contact the player one more time in whispers and in say chat (shown in screenshot), user was given a temporary suspension for griefing.

If you are toxic, and are being so knowingly and intentionally…expect a time out. Many people have quoted the Rules of Conduct. It is enforced."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2l21xk/actually_game_master_can_ban_for_preventing_maize/clqr9lt

Yes, farming ambients for the achievement it totally legit.
However, the issue at hand is specifically players killing ambients to prevent/disrupt someone else from farming them.
Doing that is against the ToS in no uncertain terms.

Which is why I suggest recording such incidents and reporting them.
A mod/GM can determine whether someone was simply not being courteous, or was genuinely griefing.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Looked it up, he was suspended, not banned, so I was close but not entirely accurate.
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2l21xk/actually_game_master_can_ban_for_preventing_maize/

Anet Comment clarifying:
“Just going to clear this up…

GM was called to the situation after multiple reports filed from a players for Griefing.
Player’s client language was set to English
Player received multiple warnings via Whisper (Whisper) in English
Player was moved from the map and placed in a different instance of the map (in case they were actually farming something useful rather than griefing)
Player attempted multiple times to zone back into this specific version of the map, eventually was successful
Returned to previous behavior
An attempt was made to make sure that the GM got this player’s attention
After attempting to contact the player one more time in whispers and in say chat (shown in screenshot), user was given a temporary suspension for griefing.

If you are toxic, and are being so knowingly and intentionally…expect a time out. Many people have quoted the Rules of Conduct. It is enforced."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2l21xk/actually_game_master_can_ban_for_preventing_maize/clqr9lt

Yes, farming ambients for the achievement it totally legit.
However, the issue at hand is specifically players killing ambients to prevent/disrupt someone else from farming them.
Doing that is against the ToS in no uncertain terms.

Which is why I suggest recording such incidents and reporting them.
A mod/GM can determine whether someone was simply not being courteous, or was genuinely griefing.

That is just outrageous and looks like blatant abuse by a GM. Killing anything for any reason is perfectly legit. Anet blatantly took sides over which player has the right to farm what. Which is ironic since anets anti-farm mentality is usually to ban people who discover good farms anyway.

dom.2748:

Killing anything for any reason is perfectly legit. Anet blatantly took sides over which player has the right to farm what. Which is ironic since anets anti-farm mentality is usually to ban people who discover good farms anyway.

Killing something for an achievement, a heart quest, funsies, etc. Those are all fine. Killing something to troll others isn’t “perfectly legit”.

“However, the issue at hand is specifically players killing ambients to prevent/disrupt someone else from farming them.
Doing that is against the ToS in no uncertain terms.”

It’s not griefing.

“https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/”
While playing Guild Wars 2, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, embarrass or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players. This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about players, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, reporting players maliciously, attacking a player based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Killing something for an achievement, a heart quest, funsies, etc. Those are all fine.

try telling that to some of the Maize Balm farmers they will rage send pm’s like what happened to me.

JediYoda.1275:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Killing something for an achievement, a heart quest, funsies, etc. Those are all fine.

try telling that to some of the Maize Balm farmers they will rage send pm’s like what happened to me.

Yeah, sometimes they get grumpy. But if they’re verbally harassing you, then you should report them.

Maize balm farming is champ train drama all over again.

There are equally valid reasons to kill the crows as there are for hitting them with the balm.

You go kill the crows for your heart, you get “griefed” by balm farmers. You balm farm, you are “griefing” the people trying to do the heart.

They really need to just change the balm to a different function.

If there is enough drama at that heart, ANet will eventually remove the ambients and change the heart requirements or make the ambients not affected by the balm. Ambient farmers would do well to keep this in mind when farming at that heart and not be messaging the people doing heart completion.

rhapsody.3615:

As long as the person isn’t following you specifically map to map, I’m not sure Anet would consider it griefing. They might be trying to get weapon kills in the same spot.

Has happened to me a lot. There I am with some time to kill getting my shield achievement and suddenly people start shouting at me. Then again people are always angry at something, so yeah.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If there is enough drama at that heart, ANet will eventually remove the ambients and change the heart requirements or make the ambients not affected by the balm. Ambient farmers would do well to keep this in mind when farming at that heart and not be messaging the people doing heart completion.

Heh every time that happens I am reminded of

Scholar Dane: That should keep the portal closed.
Scholar Dane: Until the skritt give in to greed again, anyway.

some people have asked to make skritt a playable race
others have been playing as skritt since launch

ANET has a very high bar on what constitutes greifing. As in the Rata Sum maize balm case, to be greifing you have to be actively, intentionally and clearly maliciously trying to cause someone else problems. As long as you can provide some justifiable reason for doing what you’re doing like “I’m farming my shield kills” or “I hate rats”, then you’re in the clear. What got the player in the maize incident banned was that he was given his own instance of rata sum to kill rats in, but he actively tried to get back into the other instance so he could keep greifing. If he had ANY reason to be killing those rats, he would’ve been happier in that ghost instance.

If the OP is complaining about players griefing during a balm farm, He’s absolutely right. It’s a form of harassment. I’ve seen it first hand, and mostly just laughed it off.

There’s the players that just run though and wack an ambient, not knowing that you’re farming them, or are doing a heart mission. No big deal, as you can just wait until they spawn again.

There’s the players that watch, and want in on the farm too. That’s cool, and I usually explain what I’m doing and invite them to leech of my tosses by partying up with them. Everybody wins.

Then there’s the people that the OP is talking about. These guys are well aware of what you’re doing and either kill the ambient creatures that spawn so you can’t get a reasonable use from your expensive maize balm. Or, they spam damage so the Candy Corn Golems are killed before the level increases, effectively one-shotting them and preventing the balm owner from getting credit.

Heck, in the last couple days that I’ve farmed, one guy stood around for over a hour, making one particular spot usless, accusing me of being a botter and threatening to report me. It’s unreal how petty and mean spirited some people are. Worth reporting them? I doubt it.