Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone just want to bring up this question because I feel it directly affects patch 9/9 and what people might think of it.

Is key farming an exploit yes or no? Create toon-farm-delete toon (repeat)

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=exploit+computer+definition

Personally Im indifferent about key farming but want to see what the general forum thinks.

It’s a way to freely obtain large quantities of cash shop items for minimal effort. Some guildies have told me they farmed 20 keys a day for a while.

That’s a net loss of massive profit for ANet when you consider key gem costs, and the sheer number of people that “key farm”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Are-Black-Lion-Key-runs-an-exploit/

rapthorne.7345:

That’s a net loss of massive profit for ANet when you consider key gem costs, and the sheer number of people that “key farm”

It’s actually a net loss of 0. I don’t know of any key farmers who would buy keys with gems, or convert gold to gems and buy them. It’s simply a waste of money.

The people with massive disposable incomes likely never stopped buying them in the first place. The people who key farmed likely never bought them, or will ever buy them. As the ratio of time/effort/reward has made key farming pretty much obsolete at this point I think most key farmers have just shrugged it off, it’s just one more thing not worth doing in the game.

Basically it’s not an exploit, so it won’t get you banned or suspended, but it’s also not something Anet necessarily support.

Which means they can and will make changes that affect key farming without taking it into consideration – like changing the story so you have to get to level 10 before you start.

Stated by several mods it was not an exploit. May not be what they would like but they did not see it as an exploit. As Danikat said they can change it at any time and they did.

If black lion chest key price goes down from 125 gems to 25 gems per key, I’d definitely buy some. I don’t think the price is right for the keys especially when they are RNG

I thought key farming died with the feature pack.

Ice.5162:

I thought key farming died with the feature pack.

A lot of people were predicting it would, but I think that was mostly based on a misconception that the key had been moved to the end of the level 20 storyline or removed completely.

It is slower now because you have to get to level 10 before you can start the story, but I’ve been making new characters to test the new levelling system and I’ve seen people key farming still.

Danikat.8537:

Ice.5162:

I thought key farming died with the feature pack.

A lot of people were predicting it would, but I think that was mostly based on a misconception that the key had been moved to the end of the level 20 storyline or removed completely.

It is slower now because you have to get to level 10 before you can start the story, but I’ve been making new characters to test the new levelling system and I’ve seen people key farming still.

Any estimate of how long it takes per key now?

90 to 120 minutes.
Depending on class, weapons, and how good you are.

I don’t think it was an exploit as it was not bypassing normal game play. Nor was it using some bug or glitch.

Personally, I don’t like repeating the same content over and over but I don’t care if others want to put their time into it.

However, I resent GW2 giving us the frequent drop of chests in game without a reliable in game manner through normal game play to get keys to unlock the chests. I understand they need to make money and that some people will spend a boat load of money on keys gambling to get something cool. However, I’ve always felt that manipulative ways to get get money from people is sort of sleezy. Just my personal opinion not necessarily shared by others but is one of those things that has affected my opinion of gw2 business decisions.

Made it yesterday in 70 mins + 2 gold for crafting. Will be around 90 mins without crafting but i didn’t find where to go after i got lvl7 (next heart is lvl 9 and killing mobs is a pain ). And if u take price of 1 key in gold its around 15 gold now so 2g for crafting is not so much if u want to save 20-30 mins.

It took me an hour to get to level 10 last time I tried it. What I’m going to try next time is to do the five easy hearts in Queensdale, run to the garrison and do the heart there then the heart that involves killing the wasps and wasp nests.

After that I found the hearts were too slow for fast leveling. I’m going to go to WvW. Run to the LA portal and go through. That puts me near the Caledon portal. Go through that and hit the easy starter hearts for more fast leveling.

I don’t want to craft to level. It seems counter productive to spend one or two gold each time. If you are doing this to get a weapon skin to sell it cuts into your profit too much unless you raise the price to cover crafting cost times the number of runs it took you.

At least now we have some use for those level 20 experience scrolls. Instant access to the personal story.

Zoso.8279:

Is key farming an exploit yes or no? Create toon-farm-delete toon (repeat)

If it were an exploit in the official sense, people would have been banned for it, which they weren’t. But I think it’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that ArenaNet makes money through the gem store and selling keys is part of that, so they have a vested interest in making it more difficult for people to buy keys with cash instead of farming them. As someone who generally does just that (I’d rather not spend my play time key farming and so long as I’m enjoying the game, I do want to financially support it), I don’t think there is anything wrong with ArenaNet wanting to make money from the game. Guild Wars 2 is not a charity operation. For it to keep going, ArenaNet and NCSoft need to make money doing it. There is nothing in the Black Lion chests that you need to play or win the game, so they are not making the game a play-to-win game. And for whatever it’s worth, I got a key from a starting area map completion yesterday, so maybe that’s a viable way to farm keys.

No, it was not an exploit. Thats not to say that Anet liked how it was working. Either way it does not matter much now. Move along folks…nothing to see here.

I do one key run per day if I have time and if I’m in the mood. I figured it’s faster to do some hearts in one starter area and then some hearts in another starter area. Also, exploring the cities seems like it gives no experience, but once you complete a city map (100%), it gives you quite a chunk of experience.

I’ll never buy keys from the Gem Store, not even if they completely remove key farming, nor if they increase chances of tickets/ticket scraps dropping. Buying something with real life money or even spending gold on something that is completely RNG based seems like a ridiculous idea to me.

I would, however, buy BL weapon skins or tickets for gems, if they were sold in the Gem Store.

As stated above, it’s not an exploit.

The question of whether they lost money by key farming is a different one and imo I suspect they didn’t. The people who key farmed did so because they either didn’t have the disposable real money to buy sufficient keys to get a weapon skin (typically around $50 USD) or simply didn’t want to. Nerfing key farming is unlikely to cause either of these 2 groups to buy keys.

Let’s say it this way: At least ArenaNet did not remove the key from the first chapter. Thus it’s still feasible (about 1hr) to get the key, which is okay.

At least they let you farm the key, in contrast to other greedy P2W companies.

You know most of the “I’m a veteran and hate the new leveling system” posts are really from veterans that hate the new key farming experience. You can see through it a mile away. So does Anet. The new system is quite good I think. I have leveled a new mesmer to 37 so far and dont feel it has been as grindy as it was in the past. In fact I like it. I can see where a new player would really enjoy it.

If ANet did not remove:

• the key; or
• this thread

… then it is not an exploit.

ABrooke.7129:

You know most of the “I’m a veteran and hate the new leveling system” posts are really from veterans that hate the new key farming experience. You can see through it a mile away. So does Anet. The new system is quite good I think. I have leveled a new mesmer to 37 so far and dont feel it has been as grindy as it was in the past. In fact I like it. I can see where a new player would really enjoy it.

I dunno about that. While I’m sure that there is a lot of rage from the key-farmers, I do think the levels of criticism run deeper than that, some of it warranted, some of it not.

I think there’s some criticism simply because it’s a change. People as a general rule don’t like change, even if it doesn’t effect them. They openly wonder what was wrong with the old system, even if they haven’t leveled a character in a year.

Some people like running alts, and don’t like being gated from stuff they used to be able to enjoy right from level 1. To them it doesn’t matter that the level curve to unlock everything at level 15 is faster. They used to be able to do it right from the start.

Some people don’t like games being simplified, because they think it encourages a dropping of the overall skill level of the player base. Poor players tends to mean that content (even at higher levels) eventually gets dumbed down to suit that lower skill level.

Are they wrong? I dunno. That’s for the developers and their management to decide.

It’s not an exploit but I’m sure the devs didn’t expect anyone would be doing it. And since it’s not a game play mode that they expect there is no reason for them to go out of their way to preserve it.

Personally, I would call it an exploit. It’s definitely not contained within the spectrum of ways that the game was intended to be played. I would hardly even consider it playing the game, other than the fact that you are in the game, and you are playing.

Fastest way I have found to do key’s with current system: Explore Rata Sum, Explore The Grove (gets you to level 5), Craft karma food to 175 = level 10. Start story, finish at level 12.

I don’t consider it an exploit because the reward is so small. The best key runners were doing 3, maybe 4 keys an hour for repetitive mindless play. Who am I to judge how you want to play for such paltry rewards.

If anything it’s an indication that the rewards from the BLTC were so paltry that this type of gameplay is more desirable than the price of keys. Isn’t it curious that players are reporting a massive boost in tickets and scraps since the patch now that keyrunning is even slower?

GM Talon.8726:

To echo what Gaile said in the aforementioned thread brought up by Healix, key farming is not considered an exploit.

You say its not an exploit, but you sure made it a much more time consuming process. I almost feel like this is the only reason you changed the story content, as there is no positives from limiting players from accessing content immediately upon starting the game… Its a real shame your going that route to trying to push people to pay for keys who were never going to buy them to begin with.

I’ve seen new players posting questions about how to do the Personal Story because they aren’t high enough level to safely travel to the next contact point. That was the issue they fixed by making sure the entire chapter was playable when you start it and the easiest way to do that is set the level it unlocks to the min level of the last part of the chapter. The loss of the key farm was collateral damage of that fix.

Actually no, if that would have been “the issue”, the easiest way would have been to just convert the already well thought out existing “level recommendations” (which even were displayed each time to the player when asking him if he wanted to start a personal quest) to a “level requirement”.

The change happened because they wanted to standardize the way these personal questlines work to match how the living story works, so that both operate under a unified system. It probably is easier to maintain that way.

Anyway, the original question was answered, no exploit.

Rogue.7856:

GM Talon.8726:

To echo what Gaile said in the aforementioned thread brought up by Healix, key farming is not considered an exploit.

You say its not an exploit, but you sure made it a much more time consuming process. I almost feel like this is the only reason you changed the story content, as there is no positives from limiting players from accessing content immediately upon starting the game… Its a real shame your going that route to trying to push people to pay for keys who were never going to buy them to begin with.

Yes because rewriting the whole leveling structure, moving the personal story to unlock at level 10, implementing a whole new system JUST to get rid of key farming is super efficient. If they wanted to remove key farming, all that they needed to do was remove keys as a reward.

Months of design, programming, testing, and tweaking to remove key farming? Not so much, more of a side effect than anything, as it was officially confirmed not to be an exploit, nor a form of cheating. As a key farmer, i was disappointed, yes. But not so much as to go all x-files on it.

Rogue.7856:

GM Talon.8726:

To echo what Gaile said in the aforementioned thread brought up by Healix, key farming is not considered an exploit.

You say its not an exploit, but you sure made it a much more time consuming process. I almost feel like this is the only reason you changed the story content, as there is no positives from limiting players from accessing content immediately upon starting the game… Its a real shame your going that route to trying to push people to pay for keys who were never going to buy them to begin with.

I firmly believe the story changes had absolutely NOTHING to do with key farming. I have been and I’m sure will be in the future, critical of some of the design decisions that Arena Net makes with GW2 – but in this instance nothing was done that deserves to be criticized. The personal story closely reflects the changes that they made for the China GW2 release…with at least one large related exception – keys are not rewarded until the level 20 story in China. Assuming this is true (I have never personally played on the China client,) if Arena Net wanted to practically kill key farming, they would of changed the key reward to the level 20 story instead of keeping it the level 10 story in NA/EU.

Rogue.7856:

GM Talon.8726:

To echo what Gaile said in the aforementioned thread brought up by Healix, key farming is not considered an exploit.

You say its not an exploit, but you sure made it a much more time consuming process. I almost feel like this is the only reason you changed the story content, as there is no positives from limiting players from accessing content immediately upon starting the game… Its a real shame your going that route to trying to push people to pay for keys who were never going to buy them to begin with.

Just because something is not an exploit doesn’t mean that it is something that they would take into consideration when changing things.

They changed it because people said the story was too broken up. That people didn’t like having to wait a level between steps in a chapter. Was the way they solved that problem the best one, no, but it solved the problem. There are no breaks in between steps in a chapter anymore.

Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, but couldn’t you progress in the Personal Story regardless of what level you were anyway? You could attempt to do PS steps higher than your actual level if you unlocked them, but it would be rough.

25 gems for a key makes more sense to me . Rng in this game already super bad and the chest rewards in general are utterly useless . At 125 gems a key , I simply just say no. But hey common sense left this game 2 years ago . Get that money while u still can anet.

I’ve seen an Anet dev post around a year and a half ago that key running was not an exploit. The reason the dev gave was that repeating game content over and over is not an exploit, therefore doing the story missions to get the keys is not an exploit either, as all you’re doing is repeating the game’s content.

Key farming is not an exploit, but I think it’s obvious they want to subtly discourage it so as to encourage more people to buy keys instead.

ALL THE FARMS are pretty much gone now. All that’s left is the BLTP stock exchange an buying gems . MMM MMM sounds good to me . Time to play the game straight for the 14th or 15th time….

Katz.5143:

I don’t think it was an exploit as it was not bypassing normal game play. Nor was it using some bug or glitch.

Personally, I don’t like repeating the same content over and over but I don’t care if others want to put their time into it.

However, I resent GW2 giving us the frequent drop of chests in game without a reliable in game manner through normal game play to get keys to unlock the chests. I understand they need to make money and that some people will spend a boat load of money on keys gambling to get something cool. However, I’ve always felt that manipulative ways to get get money from people is sort of sleezy. Just my personal opinion not necessarily shared by others but is one of those things that has affected my opinion of gw2 business decisions.

Nono, I’m sure there’s plenty who agree with you.

When the keys are $1.56 each, that’s really just an insulting money grab. The discounts get sharp enough to be about $0.90 each in bulk, but then you’re dropping well over ten bucks on it.

If the price dropped to 40 or 60 gems (50-70 cents), I’d definitely buy at least a few at a time.

Now that key runs take much longer (I got one right after the Destiny’s Edge kittenfest in LA), it’s debatable how much that $1.56 is worth. Though.. considering my key runs still net me tons of sellable farming mats, I end up gaining gold and a key.

AngelDiscarnate.5489:

90 to 120 minutes.
Depending on class, weapons, and how good you are.

No you can still do it in 30 minutes or so, you have to craft yourself to level 10 though.

Rauderi.8706:

Though.. considering my key runs still net me tons of sellable farming mats, I end up gaining gold and a key.

Yeah, but none of the mobs in PS drop anything, and there are no gathering nodes in PS or early zones, so you don’t get mats and stuff anymore.

The crappy RNG isn’t worth the effort and gold to do it now, imho. I loved doing key runs in the old system. I mean, I can’t imagine doing a lot of them at a time, but for those times when I knew I just had 30 minutes to play, and I wanted to do something that was almost muscle memory so that I could let my brain defrag from the day…keyfarming was a soothing, easy 30 minutes that I didn’t have to think about, and in the end I got a chance to play lottery with a chest.

But, in all the chests I’ve opened, I’ve never gotten enough scraps to get a weapon skin; I mostly got crappy boosters, stupid 50 luck bubbles, and other junk like repair canisters. The “biggest” thing I ever got from a chest was a makeover kit.

So, while I liked chests as the cherry on top of my mental defrag keyrun, they are not worth paying real money or spending gold on, for me personally.

But however you feel about keyruns, or the impact on them by the new PS, as has been stated over and over, and here on this thread by a Mod; they are not now, nor have they ever been, an exploit.

Ethan Mccloud.3218:

ALL THE FARMS are pretty much gone now. All that’s left is the BLTP stock exchange an buying gems . MMM MMM sounds good to me . Time to play the game straight for the 14th or 15th time….

• There are still plenty of farms.
• You don’t have to be a power trader to earn money.

rapthorne.7345:

It’s a way to freely obtain large quantities of cash shop items for minimal effort. Some guildies have told me they farmed 20 keys a day for a while.

That’s a net loss of massive profit for ANet when you consider key gem costs, and the sheer number of people that “key farm”

Assuming they would else buy the keys what is not very likely.

With other words. No there is no profit lost.

Besides Anet oficially stated themself it was oke so what are we really talking about.

While key farming is not an exploit, do you REALLY wanna play the game like that?
I know some people say playing games are already a waste of time, but dude, don’t waste it like that.

Don’t “Chinese Farmerize” yourself.

Devata.6589:

rapthorne.7345:

It’s a way to freely obtain large quantities of cash shop items for minimal effort. Some guildies have told me they farmed 20 keys a day for a while.

That’s a net loss of massive profit for ANet when you consider key gem costs, and the sheer number of people that “key farm”

Assuming they would else buy the keys what is not very likely.

With other words. No there is no profit lost.

Besides Anet oficially stated themself it was oke so what are we really talking about.

“That’s assuming they would have bought they keys if they weren’t able to farm them.

In other words, there’s no loss of profit if they weren’t going to spend the money either way."

Sorry, that was confusing to read, so I figured a translation of sorts would be helpful. And I agree with the sentiment.

Snowmoon.1758:

While key farming is not an exploit, do you REALLY wanna play the game like that?
I know some people say playing games are already a waste of time, but dude, don’t waste it like that.

Don’t “Chinese Farmerize” yourself.

And don’t put words in other peoples’ mouths, and assume all people are going to feel the same way you do.

A lot of people keyfarm because it’s a way to just turn off your brain and relax. I do it when I’ve had a stressful day and just want to do something that I don’t have to put a lot of thought into. I’ll put on a video on my second monitor, and just run some keyfarms for a bit.

Just because you don’t enjoy it, it doesn’t mean other people don’t. And also, don’t assume people are doing it just for the “profit” either.

Katz.5143:

However, I resent GW2 giving us the frequent drop of chests in game without a reliable in game manner through normal game play to get keys to unlock the chests. I understand they need to make money and that some people will spend a boat load of money on keys gambling to get something cool. However, I’ve always felt that manipulative ways to get get money from people is sort of sleezy. Just my personal opinion not necessarily shared by others but is one of those things that has affected my opinion of gw2 business decisions.

I wasn’t going to say anything in this thread, cause it is what it is, but this one I feel needs to be commented on.

GW2 is AMAZINGLY generous in the fact that there is any way at all to get a key in game. RNG Chest drops with store bought keys are the most common place items in F2P games, but in no other one I’ve played is there any way to get the keys but through real money purchases. That ANet offers any free keys at all is above and beyond.

Rogue.7856:

GM Talon.8726:

To echo what Gaile said in the aforementioned thread brought up by Healix, key farming is not considered an exploit.

You say its not an exploit, but you sure made it a much more time consuming process. I almost feel like this is the only reason you changed the story content, as there is no positives from limiting players from accessing content immediately upon starting the game… Its a real shame your going that route to trying to push people to pay for keys who were never going to buy them to begin with.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Are-Black-Lion-Key-runs-an-exploit/first#content

Look at the top of this (earlier linked) thread, where a dev says in no uncertain terms that key runs are not an exploit, but they may change the rewards down the road. This thread is from a year ago. They said this may happen, and now it has.

duckideva.6358:

But, in all the chests I’ve opened, I’ve never gotten enough scraps to get a weapon skin; I mostly got crappy boosters, stupid 50 luck bubbles, and other junk like repair canisters. The “biggest” thing I ever got from a chest was a makeover kit.

http://gw2blacklion.com/
(though the drop rates seem to change with each patch)

I mostly key farmed to get black lion salvage kits. Probably still will, just haven’t lately because I have 7 more BLSKs to burn through. 300 gems = nearly 40 gold, or 1.5 gold per use. It’s just not worth buying them with gems.

The other stuff I got was just gravy. 1 claim ticket, 47 scraps out of about 200 keys (though half those scraps came recently from 40 keys I’d left in my bank and forgotten about – see above about drop rates changing).

Snowmoon.1758:

While key farming is not an exploit, do you REALLY wanna play the game like that?
I know some people say playing games are already a waste of time, but dude, don’t waste it like that.

Don’t “Chinese Farmerize” yourself.

Different people enjoy different things about the game. I like to take an encounter, and figure out how to optimize it. In the case of key runs, it was a matter of figuring out the most effective build and shortest routes. So I had a lot of fun doing it. I did a test run under the new system last night, and I like the change. If you don’t take the crafting shortcut, the hearts give about 40% a level. So now I’m faced with a different optimization problem – figuring out the quickest way to hit enough heart quests in the starter zones to hit level 10.

I consider solving this sort of traveling salesman problem to be fun. I realize not everyone does, so I don’t judge them for not wanting to do key runs. But likewise I would ask that you not judge me and lump me with Chinese gold farmers just because you don’t enjoy what I enjoy. If I simply wanted to optimize making money in the game, I would just get a second RL job and spend the pay on gems. Minimum wage is $7.25/hr, which is 580 gems/hr. At about 10 gold/100 gens, that’s 58 gold/hr minimum. By that metric, pretty much anything you do in the game is a waste of time.

Honestly why do people constantly use the gold to gem rate when they should be using the gem to gold rate. Oh that’s right, the graph and amounts when the gem exchange opens is the gold to gem rate. The gold to gem rate has been over 10g since the end of May.