Guild Wars 2

Karma should be removed from the DR equation. Whatever items you can purchase with karma that are left which are not account bound should be made so, first.

I do not see how Karma is impacting the economy, so the reasoning behind Karma DR makes no sense (or XP for that matter).

Mr. Peters,

Thanks for taking the time to reply and for allaying some of our concerns regarding the overall philosophy of the ArenaNet regarding the farming playstyle. While I can’t be certain from your post what will be changed regarding karma DR (will the timer be reduced? Removed? Will we be able to reset it again some way? etc.), I’m relieved to hear this is being acknowledged as something that needs to be fixed because it is negatively impacting players who are playing normally.

Needless to say, many questions remain unanswered and until whatever changes come in the the following weeks many of us will continue to have our karma gain significantly reduced. I do not understand the need for this because I must admit I do not understand how botters gaining karma could so negatively impact the gold market, as you described. I assume, however, this is not an arbitrary decision and respectfully defer to your judgement (as if I had a choice =P).

Whatever ArenaNet decides, I respectfully request that they follow suit with how Dungeon rewards were clearly explained. I think that explanation was a model to be emulated because it left very little doubt in the player’s minds regarding the companies philosophy and exactly what the players could for their bottom line rewards.

Thanks.

In the end they may just be killing themselves like Tor.
Why not go after the gold buyers and sellers and remove DR –
That is the simplest thing I know how to fix the issue.

If you cant do that then there really is no hope.
Again we are not the enemy but you treat us like we are.

Jon – Thanks for your reply…finally. At least know we know that it is a “harsh” system and that there are bugs still with this system. Much of the frustration for many of us (I Believe) is because we had no real idea if the system was functioning as intended.

No news is not always good news and silence is usually deafening. I realize you’re all busy people, but taking a few moments to just say, it’s sporked, we know and we’re working on it would go a long way in avoiding the kinds of threads we’ve seen over the past two weeks.

Thanks.

The Guild Wars team also implemented a system of DR that did appear to target and was definitely affecting farmers, but was also touted as an ‘anti-botting’ measure.

While I recognize that botting is not desirable for the in-game economy, a player who is actively focusing on farming a particular area or creature type is going to be even more efficient at farming than a bot will be at the same activity. Given that, how, using a system of diminishing returns for repeated activity, could you possibly detect and prevent the botter without affecting the legitimate farmer?

JonPeters.5630:

We thought we should put in our 2 cents as well.

Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.

Some players have run into “diminishing returns” thresholds we put into the game to provide a safety net against unanticipated economy-breaking issues. We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them. We’ve recently had bugs and imbalances that have caused normal players to hit thresholds, and we’ll fix those.

These systems are put in place to protect the economy from botters and exploiters. We will close exploits as quickly as we can. These thresholds help create a safety net to keep the economy safe when we aren’t there to deal with the offender. It’s important to have a safety net in place. It would be bad for everyone if, for example, a group of players learned how to speed-clear a dungeon in 5 minutes, with full rewards each time, and then repeated that continuously. When one activity emerges that’s order of magnitudes more profitable than anything else in the game, it forces everyone to either engage in that activity or get priced out of the economy.

While we need a safety net to stop unanticipated economy-breaking exploits and botting, we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.

Initially we have to rely on smaller data sets, instinct and some guesswork to find the correct cutoff. What this means is that some players are going to bump into the edges of these systems for a while as we get them sorted out. Please bear with us while we gather more data and lower the safety net until it’s only providing critical economy protection. Looking at the numbers this morning, we believe some of the threshold systems are just too harsh empirically and we’ll be adjusting those systems within the next few weeks to ensure that fewer legitimate players are being impacted.

I hope this helps to explain why a game like this needs systems such as this to protect its economy. I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD). Thanks for your support and we will see you in game.

Jon

Really now. I would love it if you guys could sort out the fact that if I start the Balthazar temple events from the beginning, which you kind of need to do, that I hit the DR before even getting the southern army to the rally point. This system is beyond broken if people playing the game normally are never supposed to see it.

Beyond broken is kind of an understatement.

lunatuna.6823:

Is trying to complete a zone (hearts, POIs, skill points, etc.) considered normal game play? Cause I’ve hit DR several times just trying to do that while working on my 100% map completion. There are several zones that have a large concentration of mobs of a single type (centaurs, flame legion, branded or undead). It’s disheartening to have to choose between finishing a zone now or waiting a few days to finish it when you can get normal loot too.

Valid point! One i brought up. In the course of playing regularly, I never ever want to see it again. I don’t want to have to monitor it. It seems by “raising the threashold” as they put it, I might still unitentionally get hit by it. Which means, I have to monitor for it.

If this is the case then this is not a valid fix. “expoiting” for me means finding a loophole like autofiring a weapon and doing it 24 hours in an event. Example if I want to legitimately do an event for 20 hours = I should get full rewards for full participation.

I think DR is beyond repair, The goal needs to be removal, not fixing it because its so fundamentally flawed.

Clearly, we out here in the world who aren’t botters, do not understand what the botters are doing that’s so dangerous to the economy.

I’ve seen bots. Of course I have. I have an 80 character and I’ve been in Orr. It was standing in one place waiting for events to trigger – presumably so it could kill/loot the waves of mobs and get the completion rewards for the events. I can see how over time, with many thousands of accounts doing it, that could be disastrous for the economy.

But I’ve never personally found a situation where dungeon tokens or karma could be used to make gold; maybe they exist but in my day to day play, I’ve never run across one, with the possible exception of crafting things then selling back to vendors.

So somebody please, correct me if I’m wrong, but short of crafting items, you can’t sell anything you’ve purchased with Karma right? And dungeon tokens… well if they want their bots to look pretty, ok then, but how does that hurt the economy? And while I’m at it, are you saying that there are bots running dungeons? That seems… unlikely considering how much activity is necessary just to survive, much less win.

So help us out with a little understanding of the real problem. Because as it stands, I’m not even willing to log in any longer. I love many things about this game and want it to succeed, but I don’t think it’s being harsh – rather just honest so that the point is truly made and hopefully taken – to say that I have better things to do with my gaming time than be part of a data collection experiment, which given the blackout of information we’ve received so far is precisely how I and literally everyone else I know who bought the game feel.

Let me say it again, I don’t know anyone, not one person in real life, who bought this game, who still plays because we don’t know what’s happening or why.

I know about a dozen who are waiting to get back into it, but not with much real hope. From our (opinion) perspective, the game is fundamentally broken and the development team haven’t any idea how to fix it. Blankets and nets are well and good in theory but the former puts everyone in the dark and the latter has just enough holes in it to be a terrible patch to stop a tidal wave.

Derpinator.2894:

… I know about a dozen who are waiting to get back into it, but not with much real hope. From our (opinion) perspective, the game is fundamentally broken and the development team haven’t any idea how to fix it. Blankets and nets are well and good in theory but the former puts everyone in the dark and the latter has just enough holes in it to be a terrible patch to stop a tidal wave.

Yep, unfortunately, I have found this to be true with my friends as well.

The confirmation that a DR system exists at all was enough for ~half of my friends to stop logging in. Most feel betrayed and won’t be back, but some said they would check back weekly for a public message DR has been removed from the game.

I was surprised at the strong response, as I know these people pretty well, and most of them are moderate in their views and opinions. Unfortunately, the justification for them is: It’s not in any other MMO they play.
I had nothing to say in response. It’s true.

What I am getting is that they are going to somehow salvage DR so it usually won’t hit us. What I am afraid of is that, this might turn into a war of symantics. Their definition of normal play may differ greatly than what ours is. Then it’ll be come about “us not playing right.” (oh God, the fanboys would love that!)

1) I don’t want to have to “play right” I just want to play.

2) I don’t want to monitor your broken system even if you tweek it.

If there is a 20% chance at a rare drop, it needs to be 20% each time. If an event give 350 Karma/1 silver/ 700 XP= it does so every time without fail.

Understand?

Lol wouldn’t it stop most things period, if you did something like add a buff tag to a character every time they kill a mob to earn credit for an event. ANd then if they weren’t in the area during the end of the event, this would turn into a debuff that lowered event rewards by 10% per stack up to 10 stacks. The current stack would disappear at the end of the event, as long as you were in the area. I’d think a good time for it to last would be somewhere within 30 mins to an hour. This would stop anyone from simply attacking a mob, then running to the next event. And as for the players who aren’t particularly farming events, even if they did pick up a random tag on accident, a stack or two of the buff wouldn’t matter, as chances are it would be gone by the time they actually wanted to farm events.

There seems to be much speculation on how easy it is to tweak the DR system. Where are the inner workings of the system published so I can determine how easy it is? Where is the empirical analysis of the system? Such speculation only promulgates myth, and does not add to the discussion.

Shimond.2478:

Karma should be removed from the DR equation. Whatever items you can purchase with karma that are left which are not account bound should be made so, first.

I do not see how Karma is impacting the economy, so the reasoning behind Karma DR makes no sense (or XP for that matter).

Karma does not add to the economy, but it can take away. If something can be gained through karma that would otherwise be purchased in the public economy its effects will be felt in the economy. It may not be as direct of an effect, but to claim no effect is false.

For example, some gear can be obtained through karma and without DR someone can set up a bot to farm karma so they can equip themselves faster than they would by normal means; which could include crafting it using purchased goods, buying it directly, or just playing the game normally. Either way someone is exploiting the karma system with their botting.

vjek.4270:

Derpinator.2894:

I was surprised at the strong response, as I know these people pretty well, and most of them are moderate in their views and opinions. Unfortunately, the justification for them is: It’s not in any other MMO they play.
I had nothing to say in response. It’s true.

They are right to feel that way. I’m a pretty moderate person myself, but some issues you don’t budge on. DR doesn’t exist in any other game because it’s a horrible concept. It’s a big middle finger to your fans and player base.

What were they thinking?

SirMoogie.9263:

Shimond.2478:

Karma should be removed from the DR equation. Whatever items you can purchase with karma that are left which are not account bound should be made so, first.

I do not see how Karma is impacting the economy, so the reasoning behind Karma DR makes no sense (or XP for that matter).

Karma does not add to the economy, but it can take away. If something can be gained through karma that would otherwise be purchased in the public economy its effects will be felt in the economy. It may not be as direct of an effect, but to claim no effect is false.

Your argument is then to remove Karma entirely? If that happened, people would start farming mats to make exotics or farming gold to buy them. Oh wait, they can buy gear from the priory/order/vigil. That now has to go. Oh wait the taders sell gear too Where does it end?

For some reason I can’t use the quote buttons at the moment, so we’ll do this the onld fashioned way.

I think so many people responded harshly (I know I did) is while Jon said a lot of the right things. He stopped short of saying that legit people playing will never hit DR again.

really? Allow me to quote a couple lines:

“We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.”

“Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. "

“I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD). "

Seems clear to me that they have no intention of harmind people that are not using damaging exploits, bots, or glitches.

I don’t want to hit DR at all. Do I have to worry about DR and constantly watch my rewards? That is a hassle I don’t want to have. That is work and a job. This is a game. I want to play for enjoyment, not work.

I doubt anyone wants to hit DR.

I will agree with you none of us want to be all like “OK, I’ve killed three grubs, now I need to go kill something else or I hit DR” or whatever.

We’ll have to see what they implement and how it works. I can’t imagine they want to punish players that decide to run around Orr farming karma in events for an hour or two.

I honestly don’t know how a DR system is ever going to distinguish bots from people. My assumptions here is they assume a bot moves more efficiently, focuses on certain patterns of movement and combat to make the most of things. But it’s so easy for a player to emulate those patterns just by farming naturally…On the other hand, a bot is a client-side batch script that can’t be read or detected easily by GW2. Not sure what the CAN do to fix it. Just hope they keep DR from being a problem for anyone else, and soon.

SirMoogie.9263:

Karma does not add to the economy, but it can take away. If something can be gained through karma that would otherwise be purchased in the public economy its effects will be felt in the economy. It may not be as direct of an effect, but to claim no effect is false.

For example, some gear can be obtained through karma and without DR someone can set up a bot to farm karma so they can equip themselves faster than they would by normal means; which could include crafting it using purchased goods, buying it directly, or just playing the game normally. Either way someone is exploiting the karma system with their botting.

It has already been demonstrated that this DR code does nothing to deter or reduce the effects of botting (as they stand in one place doing events as they appear, which is outside the timeframe for hitting DR on most events).

People are botting to gain levels and/or coin (which directly impact the economy and trade), not karma. Karma needs to be removed from the equation, it is not what Arena is after.

its a conspiracy to cover up the fact that the game is to easy and people are finishing way to fast and sure they made a mmo that you can finish in 1 month so this is thier fix to stop “botters” but they wont just come out and say hey we made the game to easy now its time to slow yall down

A honest and understandable response on this subject. Wish you would have done the same regarding the camera/FOV thread you made, Jon. (Link to FOV thread.)

As some suggested, try speeding up your research of farming by focussing on Orr data collections on the ‘completed the game’ portion of the playerbase, which is growing larger over time and as such more people will become affected by the current DR system. This is the area where legit farmers spend their time, so you could potentially reduce the time frame for DR reduction from ‘weeks’ to something less, atleast for that area of the game.

This goes for both karma and loot drops ofcourse. Karma is nice but most people farm for drops so they can get gold, since karma is only useful for limited perposes, while gold is essential for even the game’s most basic features.

The Dev post pretty much cleared up things for me in relation to the discussion we’ve had before it happened. It is still up in the air what exactly is considered “normal” play here, but I am fairly certain that there is a compromise to be found somewhere.

As it stands, regular play, “efficiency” oriented or not should not trigger DR in any case. Unless you have found something that was never intended by the devs, say a loop that works abnormally and lets you net loads of karma, if you hit DR, you have found a bug in the system. Report it and it should get fixed, either by adjusting he event chain or the DR.

Seems reasonable to me that preventative action is more desirable then reactive action. Calibration of the DR system is not possible anywhere else then on a live server solution. I do agree that more information about it as the system is being introduced would probably save us a lot of hassle trying to figure it out by ourselves.

The resounding rage is pretty much the typical aftermath when something, somewhere goes wrong and needs correcting. Statements that no other companies do this are pretty hilarious considering the history of a lot of MMOs where whole loot tables, mob composition, drop rates etc. are changed constantly to account for the creativity of the player base. Personally, while the position that this really shouldn’t be a problem of the players that paid to play a game is completely reasonable, one would think that most of the MMO vets going in should expect this. It is just the nature of the beast. To those that are new to launch titles, welcome to fresh MMOs.

Yeah, the sky is not falling. This is neither unusual for launch MMOs nor for bigger and smaller companies.

SHM.7628:

Your argument is then to remove Karma entirely? If that happened, people would start farming mats to make exotics or farming gold to buy them. Oh wait, they can buy gear from the priory/order/vigil. That now has to go. Oh wait the taders sell gear too Where does it end?

No it is not, nor do I see how that follows from what I said.

Shimond.2478:

It has already been demonstrated that this DR code does nothing to deter or reduce the effects of botting (as they stand in one place doing events as they appear, which is outside the timeframe for hitting DR on most events).

It has? As far as I know there is no way to peek into other player’s inventories to see how much wealth they are accruing. I imagine only Arena Net can do the proper analysis given the information available. unless of course an interested member of the community is willing to set up a bot a perform their own analysis of DR on wealth accrual for bots.

BrienBear.6073:

Alizianne.4058:

springelf.9236:

I understand what he was saying. I can see their point of view. But, just looking at this as a seller and customer: if something you are doing is angering a good portion of your customers just stop it. You flipped the switch on, switch it off. You want to put in some sort of safety net fine. But obviously its not working very well atm. So test it before you put it live.

I just got 80th and so far I havent see this, that I am aware of. But, I shouldnt have to worry I will. Its sucked out the fun in the game for me and my husband. We both feel very meh about playing knowning at some point we will gain less (whatever) for our effort.

Its not just me, or ppl we know. Its more ppl then on this forum. Its a dark whisper swirling around the gaming community. People are not just annoyed, they are angry. And angry ppl dont spend money on gems. I know we wont be. Why should we reward the seller with money, when it seems very obvious they dont care about me, the customer.

Are… are you insane? Like, are you legitimately, certifiably insane? You and your husband can’t play or enjoy this game anymore because you JUST hit level 80 and have never once experienced the diminishing returns first-hand? I am honestly sincerely baffled by this post.

Actually, his/her point is completely valid. Just because you haven’t experienced something firsthand, doesn’t mean you can’t be bothered by it, and to imply otherwise is asinine. I’ve never been shot, well, anywhere, but that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid to be.

To use an in-game example, I am scared to chat in-game because of all the heavy-handed banning that happened at the beginning. I tend to be an extreme cusser, or as my aunt puts it, “mouth like a sailor”. So I’m afraid that something I’m going to say is going to offend, and I’m going to get reported. The funny thing is, I’m gay, so I’m not about to go around going “LOLFAG”. But I will cuss up a storm (in general) if something happens and I die.

Why shouldn’t I be bothered by a limit to how much I play? I play a lot and in long stretches. From everything I read, I am going to hit a hard cap on how much the reward for my effort is going to be. So, now that I am 80th and in Orr I am thinking about it a lot. If I try to do a DE and it fails and have to do it over (etc etc), I am going to hit the DR.

So, if I play for 10 hours on Saturday I am likely to hit a DR in several areas: loot, karma, and badges. Its not very inspiring. And, I agree with posters that say this isnt really about bots. This is trying to make sure those that play a lot aren’t able to get ahead of those that can’t play as much.

Sure, I can get on alts if I hit DR but, that should be my choice….which character I want to play.

Is it not true that bots can simply farm coin all day long from one event and suffer no downsides to this whatsoever?

Is it also true that a player can farm karma from one event all day long and suffer no downside to this whatsoever?

Is it also possible that Anet encourages farming but not on an industrial scale whereby all items are deemed moot because 50% of the population can get them within 3 weeks?

Sure they messed the DR up because they went too far. But too far and then softening is better than being too soft and slowly getting harsher.

If someone farms for 5 hours a day and gets hit by the DR (hypothetically) whereas a player farms for 4 hours and is never hit by it – which one is defined as a farmer?

The definitions of farming are a personal definition among all players, and as such, Anet have to work out where the ‘line’ is. They will always lose. So they start at the top, and work their way down.

reloging to reset DR was an exploit not a thing against bots wtf. Bots cant farm DE events. Reloging to reset happened after the token nerf patch. It was a bug and now on this last patch is working as intended. What is NOT however intended is to hit DR on your first DE clear. say get gold and only 54karma. that is what Jon P. is referring too as Farming DE is considered an exploid.

I put in a help ticket about this before I had even heard about the DR and here is the reply I got from Steve

“I can certainly appreciate your frustration with changes to drop rates in some areas of the game. Unfortunately, the game has to be reworked from time to time to best work against exploitation. I understand that you had no nefarious intentions with the items collected in this area, but choices have to be made by the dev teams to minimize the damage across multiple segments of the population.”

how can I have “nefarious intentions” when I just play the game, don’t run with that stupid zerg and the items I collected in that area were porous bones, white items, and maybe an off the wall blue?

I am calling BS on Steve and Anet on this.

I think the last patch lowered the DR treshhold.

I made 7k karma in about1 hour doing events, before the patch the DR would have kicked in at 4k karma

Edit: my mistake, tried to get some more karma, got slapped in the face with DR before I got 5k

Diabolus Anur Kaya.8379:

I put in a help ticket about this before I had even heard about the DR and here is the reply I got from Steve

“I can certainly appreciate your frustration with changes to drop rates in some areas of the game. Unfortunately, the game has to be reworked from time to time to best work against exploitation. I understand that you had no nefarious intentions with the items collected in this area, but choices have to be made by the dev teams to minimize the damage across multiple segments of the population.”

how can I have “nefarious intentions” when I just play the game, don’t run with that stupid zerg and the items I collected in that area were porous bones, white items, and maybe an off the wall blue?

I am calling BS on Steve and Anet on this.

It has already been stated that DR at the moment is, for want of a better word, bugged… or too harsh.

If the mechanic is working on a bracket-based system, and you ventured close to the bracket (ie. in one area for too long or killing too many mobs of the same type, etc etc) then you’ll be flagged by the system.

He already stated that you were NOT nefarious. The system will be fine-tuned, but currently the only way to iron out the wrinkles in the current state of play is to come down hard and then soften each blow afterwards.

I hope that helps.

Flynch.6034:

Diabolus Anur Kaya.8379:

I put in a help ticket about this before I had even heard about the DR and here is the reply I got from Steve

“I can certainly appreciate your frustration with changes to drop rates in some areas of the game. Unfortunately, the game has to be reworked from time to time to best work against exploitation. I understand that you had no nefarious intentions with the items collected in this area, but choices have to be made by the dev teams to minimize the damage across multiple segments of the population.”

how can I have “nefarious intentions” when I just play the game, don’t run with that stupid zerg and the items I collected in that area were porous bones, white items, and maybe an off the wall blue?

I am calling BS on Steve and Anet on this.

It has already been stated that DR at the moment is, for want of a better word, bugged… or too harsh.

If the mechanic is working on a bracket-based system, and you ventured close to the bracket (ie. in one area for too long or killing too many mobs of the same type, etc etc) then you’ll be flagged by the system.

He already stated that you were NOT nefarious. The system will be fine-tuned, but currently the only way to iron out the wrinkles in the current state of play is to come down hard and then soften each blow afterwards.

I hope that helps.

I was tagged by the system by simply being in the Cursed Shore area. I stay away from the big groups. That type of play style is not fun and with the majority of bad guys in CS being Risen that respawn way too fast to stand still for any length of time then you get tagged for killing too many Risen…

Sorry for the no-quote but there’s no button! Were you previously on an alt that participated in events?

Terrant.2903:

For some reason I can’t use the quote buttons at the moment, so we’ll do this the onld fashioned way.

I think so many people responded harshly (I know I did) is while Jon said a lot of the right things. He stopped short of saying that legit people playing will never hit DR again.

really? Allow me to quote a couple lines:

“We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.”

“Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. "

“I also hope it gives some insight into our philosophy about botters (BAD) and exploiters (BAD) vs. farmers (GOOD). "

Seems clear to me that they have no intention of harmind people that are not using damaging exploits, bots, or glitches.

I don’t want to hit DR at all. Do I have to worry about DR and constantly watch my rewards? That is a hassle I don’t want to have. That is work and a job. This is a game. I want to play for enjoyment, not work.

I doubt anyone wants to hit DR.

I will agree with you none of us want to be all like “OK, I’ve killed three grubs, now I need to go kill something else or I hit DR” or whatever.

We’ll have to see what they implement and how it works. I can’t imagine they want to punish players that decide to run around Orr farming karma in events for an hour or two.

I honestly don’t know how a DR system is ever going to distinguish bots from people. My assumptions here is they assume a bot moves more efficiently, focuses on certain patterns of movement and combat to make the most of things. But it’s so easy for a player to emulate those patterns just by farming naturally…On the other hand, a bot is a client-side batch script that can’t be read or detected easily by GW2. Not sure what the CAN do to fix it. Just hope they keep DR from being a problem for anyone else, and soon.

Terrant,

I do think we are on the same page. I don’t disagree with you on most of what you said. Still, DR as a concept is flawed. The goal should be it total and utter removal. The whole thing is problematic because, for one, the game is buggy. Secondly, its going to be a nightmare distinguishing bots from players through the DR system.

There are way more effective ways of dealing with bots and exploits than this one size fits all punishment system that is bound to affect people it wasn’t intended to. Bots and exploiters need to be identified and removed.

DR is not a fix for this. It has little effect on them. Even if it did, they’d find a work around. It’s their job.

@Silencer I agree with you that other MMOs put in changes similar to DR. However, I have never seen a MMO do something like this within the first month. Worse, the DR changes came at a time when the game notably started to get more buggy. DR code introduced. Growing number of broken events and skillpoints. I’m not even trying to imply that the two are related. It is more a concern for the perception of the game. Many people were feeling good about this game and enjoying it. This DR introduction has burned away some of that goodwill. And that is something that is hard to get back, if at all.

I love this game and am still having fun. But continued bugs and this DR stuff is frustrating. At least now we have a response from Arenanet. I will continue to play the way I have been since headstart. Then when the final DR implementation is in place, I will just deal with it. However, personally, I still maintain that DR was a bad idea and should have been pulled once the “bugs” were noted.

I just hope they tell us how we’re supposed to play if they’re going to be punishing us for not playing “normally”.

dalendria.3762:

@Silencer I agree with you that other MMOs put in changes similar to DR. However, I have never seen a MMO do something like this within the first month. Worse, the DR changes came at a time when the game notably started to get more buggy. DR code introduced. Growing number of broken events and skillpoints. I’m not even trying to imply that the two are related. It is more a concern for the perception of the game. Many people were feeling good about this game and enjoying it. This DR introduction has burned away some of that goodwill. And that is something that is hard to get back, if at all.

Safety nets and preventative measures that potentially could take much more work to undo need to be put in asap. DR got a lot of flame because for one, it failed relatively spectacularly and harshly (once it hits, it hits hard, across all characters in an account and does not go away for a while which is not disclosed) towards some players that it is not supposed to affect.

It remains to be seen what exactly is “normal play”, personally I have a feeling that some playstyles will still end up hitting the DR and it will be fully intended. For the moment this remains my personal speculation which I quite obviously and persistently presented earlier in the thread.

And yes, I can agree that it burnt out some of the goodwill, but when I think about it, there are two potential scenarios here:

- The situation we have now. DR is implemented, proves way too harsh in some areas or does not account for certain event groups in others. Data is collected, system is loosened up. DR becomes unnoticeable to anyone except those who find an unintended loophole or exploit. From time to time a legitimate player bounces into DR, reports it, it gets fixed (hopefully) asap.

- DR is not introduced, is way too lenient or otherwise fails to stop potential exploits etc. Exploit is discovered and remains undetected for a few days. It is posted to a forum, spread across a guild and whatnot. By the time it reaches the devs or the devs are able to pin it down (which can take days, if not more), multiple players are aware of the exploit and actively use it. Remember the drama caused by the karma gear bans. Exploiters take to the forums, redits, what have you and proclaim their innocence that they didn’t know that gaining 100k of karma in half an hour (overexageration intended) was an exploit. Accounts are rolled back or banned all together.

Remember the drama when grubs were blocked, then nerfed. This would happen on a constant basis. It makes the devs do double the work – one, they have to remove and/or rollback the unintended gains (and it does not matter if it affects the market or player-base or not, it still lets you get things in-game way faster then you should be able to) two, they actually have to fix the exploit.

In my opinion, they stand to loose much more of that good will if they expose themselves to rollbacks and nerfs rather then putting the belt on too tight, admitting it and working to loosen it up.

As I said, this is a natural part of post-release MMOs. Been there, done that. More then once. No beta is able to produce way enough data to predict this, it is always a question of several post launch months.

By comparison, event/skill point bugs, while very annoying, block gains/completions instead of allowing it at an unfair pace. Again, they are imho less important then the things that skyrocket people above the curve unfairly. From the perspective of an “average” player it might be more annoying, not to be able to progress due to in game bugs. But from the perspective of overall health of the game, overachieving is always worse then underachieving.

dalendria.3762:

I love this game and am still having fun. But continued bugs and this DR stuff is frustrating. At least now we have a response from Arenanet. I will continue to play the way I have been since headstart. Then when the final DR implementation is in place, I will just deal with it. However, personally, I still maintain that DR was a bad idea and should have been pulled once the “bugs” were noted.

I agree, it probably should have. But there were already several big and small “drama” sessions that potentially could have been prevented should the DR system would be in place and would work properly. Who knows what else the more creative players will discover (intentionally or not) as things get fixed.

Just the outrage and screams of blood murder seem way, way over the top considering the official answer given and the context of the system if you think about it.

Implementation could have probably been better though, no argument there.

If I do more than 1 event per 15 minutes I get my rewards cut out.

Only solution to this that I can think of is sitting in a camp all day doing the same event over and over and over and over and over until I am done working on my legendary.

Does that sound fun to anyone?

Some players have run into “diminishing returns” thresholds we put into the game to provide a safety net against unanticipated economy-breaking issues. We do have these thresholds in place, but it’s not our intention that normal players should ever run into them.

This statement really bugs me for some reason. What is a “normal” player?

I am disabled, and can pretty much play all day long. But because I am not at “normal” player I get punished for playing too much?

wow…..

Yep cerise, that’s the only viable option. Its also what the vast majority of the bots are doing. DR actively punishes you for exploring, and completely ignores bots And arenanet is somehow surprised that this causes everyone to cluster and do the exact same thing.

No DR at all, please. It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

By the way, I would like about 4 hours of my life back, when I was farming centaurs for Jute Scraps back in August. The trading post wasn’t up yet, and I needed the Jute Scraps for my crafting.

I thought the drop rate was just really really bad, or that I was unlucky. I got maybe 10 Jute Scraps that day.

Again, there can not be diminshing returns on farming in the game. Find another way to stop bots. DR is the opposite of “freedom” in the game.
Remove DR from dungeon runs too. 40 extra badges for first run of the day is fine, but make sure everyone knows when the “day” resets so we don’t waste time running an instance for only 20 badges.
Better yet, make it every 18 hours like wow.

Thank you.

Silencer

Are you saying the people who were getting 100k+ karma in “an hour and a half” were somehow exploiting?

Of course they weren’t, they were doing the same things that people have been doing since BWE1 and every stress test. There is no exploiting here at all, arenanet even acknowledged their work by congratulating them on their legendary.

Nobody got rolled back, nobody was banned.
It’s called playing the game.

Cerise

Silencer

Are you saying the people who were getting 100k+ karma in “an hour and a half” were somehow exploiting?

No. I am saying that if there is an unintended way to do so, the DR system is supposed to nip it at the bud.

Cerise

Of course they weren’t, they were doing the same things that people have been doing since BWE1 and every stress test. There is no exploiting here at all, arenanet even acknowledged their work by congratulating them on their legendary.

It was called “beta” for a reason. Expecting any beta build to behave exactly like the live game, or not be adjusted in any way is not understanding what a “beta” or “test” is.

Maybe nobody cared at the time how fast you were gaining karma, because the events were geared for other data.

Or maybe the current “acceptable” levels are based off those events.

Saying that something “worked in beta” or “worked in a previous version” has no relevance. MMOs change all the time, things get nerfed or expanded.

Cerise

Nobody got rolled back, nobody was banned.
It’s called playing the game.

In a beta? Not surprising.

And again, if anet is aware that getting a certain ammount of karma in a certain way is possible and it is okay with them, you will still be able to do so. If the DR is not supposed to “touch people who play normally” either the way to do so will stay in the game, or will get removed/moved/adjusted that it is no longer in the game.

But if there is one and only one area that lets you gain twice, three or four times more karma or anything else then any other area in the game in an obviously exploit fashion, yeah… It is no longer just “playing the game”.

There is a difference, I would think, between being good at optimizing your farm and doing it very efficiently (which is farming and as stated, is okay and should not incur DR) and finding a loophole somewhere that is obviously or not obviously not intended by design. Players find those in MMOs all the time.

ANet was completely aware of how much karma people were getting during beta doing these things, and they were completely fine with it.

ANet is completely aware of how much karma the people who got their legendary were getting, and they were completely fine with it.

There is no exploiting involved in any, there are no loopholes, of this, all of this has been well known since people started playing the game for the first time. ANet has made this clear by supporting the people who obtained their legendary. If they got it through exploiting, they would have been banned.

Now people are getting slapped in the face by doing the exact same thing. No exploits, no loopholes, just playing the game the same way it has always been played, except now the game is telling people to stop playing completely.

I was having fun leveling my thief then this happens and the DR prevent me from even playing normally. Thank you dev team for ruining my gameplay experience that I had with my other character.

You know what happens when you ruin the basic pve leveling system of your game for players? It leaves a bad taste in their mouths that doesn’t go away for a long time… that is unless they stop playing and don’t return then it stays forever.

edit: maybe you should actually test things and get things correct before slapping us with it. I’m sure most would agree that’s a great standard to hold yourself to.

Cerise.9045:

ANet was completely aware of how much karma people were getting during beta doing these things, and they were completely fine with it.

ANet is completely aware of how much karma the people who got their legendary were getting, and they were completely fine with it.

And you know this how exactly? Just the fact that they didn’t do anything at the time does not mean they were fine with it.

Cerise.9045:

There is no exploiting involved in any, there are no loopholes, of this, all of this has been well known since people started playing the game for the first time. ANet has made this clear by supporting the people who obtained their legendary. If they got it through exploiting, they would have been banned.

Right. And they have said that those who play normally will not be punished by the DR system once its properly calibrated.

You seem to assume that for some reason I am accusing anyone of exploiting. I am not. Neither is Anet. And the DR system is not there to punish anyone. It is there to catch anyone who goes above the gains that are supposed to be humanly possible.

Cerise.9045:

Now people are getting slapped in the face by doing the exact same thing. No exploits, no loopholes, just playing the game the same way it has always been played, except now the game is telling people to stop playing completely.

And the dev post here tells that it is not intended behavior for the system, nor is it there to slap anyone for “playing the game the same way it has always been played”.

For the first time I definatelly noticed the DR during ‘normal’ gameplay.

I logged in earlier in time to do the Siege Weapon parts pre-event for the Shatter, then helped kill the Shatter. After that I went to Sparkfly and did the Krait and Tequatl events (for perspective, Teq spawned 20 mins after Shatter’s death). I don’t remember if I did another Krait event after that, most likley though, considering how often that one happens.

I then did three PS missions (Under Siege, Retribution and Forging the Pact). While doing those missions, I definately noticed the DR. I got some loot bags during ‘Under Siege’, but by ‘Forging the Pact’ I was pretty much getting nothing but porous bones, if I got loot at all.

PS missions were done over three hours, as by the time I was done with ‘Forging’ it was close to dragon time again. Since Shatty and Teq were due to spawn agian so close that time around, I chose Teq to pick on. While waiting I did do another Krait event (which Teq spawned right at the end of), but pretty much got nothing from it, loot wise. I didn’t take notice of the xp/karma amount for that or Teq (I didn’t think of it at the time), but I DID notice I got nothing but blues from the chest.

Now, I don’t go ‘hunting’ for events, but I do usually do them if I am in the area at the time (like if I am waiting for a dragon to pop), depending on the event. I do farm for fine mats, but I didn’t do any of that this time (when I do, I move around a lot, hitting different types of mobs in different zones). Kind of funny how I got hit with this the one time in a while I ’wasn’t’ farming….

``While we need a safety net to stop unanticipated economy-breaking exploits and botting, we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.``

I laughed reading that part. Remember that game called Guild Wars? Let me remind you.

It was a pretty neat game, had all these different classes and builds that could be designed to your liking. Obviously this freedom of build creation gave farmers the room to mindcraft their farm builds to high potential. May it be team builds or single farm builds.

Anyway long story short. We had countless individual and team farmingbuilds. To name a few: 55hp monk, 600hp monk, 600hp monk plus smite monk, 55hp or 600hp with SS necro, E/ME solo uw farmer, Terra-way, A/E way etc etc

Now comes the funny part. Each and every of these farm builds were nerfed to the ground.Nerfing each and every single build was not enough. Loot-scaling, remember that one? I’m sure you do. In a sense its exactly the same as this stupid implementation. Oh how enraged I was. All that rage is coming back again now, thank you. Oh what about that other one which came with loot-scaling, foes brake agro when they take too much damage, ye totally loved that one too.

I’ve seen enough and experienced enough to say that ANET hates and despises any farmer out there.

TL:DR
well I did read some.
YES I definitely agree, ANET hates farmers, I played original GW, I remember how they nerfed farming builds and remember when they put DR on reentering maps so you get reduced loot just for re-entering areas to farm the same mobs.

Anyways I can’t say I didn’t expect they were going to slam the DR hammer on the farmers, just a matter of how some of the items didn’t get affected caught me by surprise.

I appreciate a response, but I am very wary that the targets of DR of who Jonpeters speaks of is not actually the farmers themselves.

Let me explain something to you ANET, if you make farming harder, people are more inclined to buy gold from the gold sellers because it is more difficult to obtain the items that they want to obtain. By making farming harder, you actually are causing the gold buyers to buy more gold, which in turn causes, according to you guys, the hackers to hack more accounts for RMT, and increase the number bots to get more gold.

From my understanding, you do not endorse, or like RMT, so by having DR it is COUNTER PRODUCTIVE to your goals in the game.

This is how you can have a better business model: DR in place for releasing less content? Make new content, only unlockable by a lot of GEMS.

Bots cannot FARM gems, hackers can hack accounts to get to gems but they can not SELL gems to another player.

By doing this gem prices will increase with respect to gold however, that is OK because guess what? people will be more inclined to BUY GEMS with real money

And by farmers flushing the economy with vast amounts of gold, that will only add to reason for people buying gems with real money because of the inflationary pressures of gold

People that will be “left behind” by not farming, can EASILY catch up buy just spending a bit of money on gems since gems will be able to buy a LOT of gold due to inflation.

Please forward this message to your management, and let them think on this and how it will MAKE THEM MORE MONEY.

It’s a WIN WIN situation for ANET, and the players.

Also if you think botting is still a problem this will fix it, I’ve seen this in a game before I forgot which one, but yes. Make an ingame CAPTCHA system. After a random amount of time every time, a SMALL pop-up (emphasis on small so it doesn’t hurt the gameplay of the player) consisting of a random 2 words will appear, if players do not enter the words within 15 minutes(FIFTEEN minutes so they have enough time even if they’re in the middle of a boss battle/event), they will be forcefully logged off.

In order for the player to relog on any character on that account, they will have to enter another Captcha, at character selection screen within 3 minutes or it will automatically log off the account again, and this time lock the account for 24 hours.
Reason for this is: if you’re taking the time to go to the character selection screen, there is very little reason you would miss this captcha unless you’re a logon script. If you use a login script, you’re so lazy, why are you even playing this game? you obviously don’t really care about playing so you can afford to NOT play for 24 hours.

If a player triggers and misses the in game captcha a certain amount of times in a row say 4 times, the account will be flagged for review as a possible botting account.

This prevents:
1. scripts that let the players bot by forceful disconnection.
2. scripts that let the players auto relog on by requiring another captcha

And allows for easier bot detection since people shouldn’t be missing their captcha entries many times in a row.

15 minutes is more than enough for people in the middles of a battle or a dungeon run etc.

and people shouldn’t be afking in game for extended periods of time anyways

I just finished my Cursed Shore map completion. Over the course of an hour or so, I feel like I did a ton of events:

I escorted an Explorer(Plix?) and his golem to town in maybe a 3-4 part event. Afterwards, I found an arena event which spawned 3 different veteran packs followed by a Champion. Finished that, then stumbled upon my millionth “Broodmother” event. Killed it. After that, I found an NPC in a Cocoon which spawned a Veteran Spider.. but it was too difficult alone and I ended up abandoning. I wandered around a bit getting various POIs, then defended a camp from a bunch of spiders with what seemed like 15x bots lending a hand. After a bit more exploring, I stumbled upon the Grenth chain and a good sized group of people. I did that entire chain to completion, but failed at what I assume was the last part (Grenth killed the NPC).

I received gold for every single event but one, and got 378 karma for every completion. Did not notice any diminishing returns whatsoever. I reckon this was due to playing correctly, rather than endlessly repeating a single chain in a centralized location.

You are probably using some kind of magic anti DR hax then because if I do more than 10 events in an hour DR hits me no matter what event I do or how far they are apart.

Jon Peters said While we need a safety net to stop unanticipated economy-breaking exploits and botting, we have no desire to stop farming. Farmers are a part every online economy and when they are doing normal game activity they do not cause any harm. If a player finds a normal game activity fun and would like to keep doing it, that’s fine with us.

The only way to stop botters is through increased manual policing and timely bans (something that is clearly not happening right now). Band aid solutions like this penalise legitimate players just as much as botters. Deal with the ailment rather than symptoms or risk damaging the patient.

I can’t make a quote so … from Jon Peters:
“Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes.”

Well you failed misserably on this one. Many things in this game stops us from “focusing on whatever best suits our tastes”, but this DR disaster which is entirely your fault, is the top one.
You actually equate freedom and limitations. Unbelievable. And to top this, we can expect solution in few weeks. Like this is just some minor bug.

Hurry up. This game started with almost fanatically worshiping community. But decisions like this DR, and especially the intentional lack of information on this issue is only draining customers and more significantly enjoyment and fun those that still play, have.