Guild Wars 2

I have noticed recently, countless necromancer’s and their minions afk farming, and some botting dredge to get miner’s sacks. I am unsure if this is something people are allowed to do. I’ve seen the same guild group there almost 24/7 around the clock, never talking, never moved. I just thought id bring this to attention to see if this is a new botting method that people have come up with.

Without a doubt with the abundance of threads the players are going to force Anet to respond, probably swiftly.

Necromancer’s running purely just minions to attack for them. Been watching for a while now. there seems to be no player activity at all, just the constant respawn of minions (easily bottable), Id estimate that these guys are getting close to almost 50 miner bags an hour or more. at 3 silver a piece, thats a huge amount of money for just doing nothing. Just imagine the mass amount of bags they get by just sitting there all day, every day. Its crazy.

In my experience, you get more opening the bags, since there are linen scraps and rugged leather in the drop table.

Yes indeed, I tagged the dredge that they were killing for just about 5 minutes. I got 6 miners bags which in turn gave me 8 linen. If this kinda thing isn’t responded to, I would expect the price on these mats to drop dramatically.

Did you need to create yet another post for this instead of adding to one of the recent existing ones?

I could not find any other posts addressing this.

There have been several the past few days, but I didn’t notice any on the front page, was kinda surprised actually.

Apparently someone who made a thread about this awhile ago had this very same concern like what OP has going on. Anet has responded and said this is against the rules with necro vs with a ranger pet where Anet said this is working as attended, which I really don’t know what that means.

So let me fill you in on something I have tested for about the past 30 minutes.

I am a Necro (main) non- minion mostly. I decided to set up as all minion and spec’d the minions for higher health and damage. For 30 minutes or so I sat there in a secluded lower level spot as not to interfere with anyone and can tell you an hour or more of this would have issues as the minions are eventually dying off.

So, if people are afk’ing this they either are monitoring it to refresh minions which would not be botting since they are interacting (that would be boring as H E double hockey sticks. OR they are in some form or another doing something to regenerate the minions (botting).

Either way again it is boring to sit there and watch and eventually all minions die then you die. I am sure there are other ways probably to keep minions up but since the minions fight with you, negating their damage could cause unwanted side effects like no loot or no exp if a minion happens to kill a mob if the player did not tag. Also I am sure from the many posts that ANET is at least looking into it.

Jaffa.1845:

I could not find any other posts addressing this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ds2c1/afk_farming_with_minions_are_allowed_behavior/

As long as they’re using game mechanics and not a 3rd party program or something it’s fine. They will most likely nerf it in the future though when they decide how.

These threads need to stop being posted. Anet does not have to respond because they’ve done so in the past multiple times. This is working as intended. No, this is not fifty miner bags an hour it is actually far less and frankly a waste of electricity on the part of the farmer.

“The more often a character loots from similar foes within an area, the more quickly DR triggers.
Once triggered, the impact of DR will increase until you won’t get any loot at all anymore.
The only way to “remove” DR is to go somewhere else for a length of time that is partly random and partly dependent on how much DR that character has. Usually, it lasts no more than 15-20 minutes if the character actively participates in other content. "

Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Diminishing_returns

This thread about 19 hours ago,

This thread about 24 hours ago.

This thread about 3 days ago.

This thread about 12 days ago.

This thread about 23 days ago.

Then, there is this thread, in the new player forum, where it’s recommended to AFK for leather:

Ayrilana.1396:

From a post I made earlier:

Ayrilana.1396:

You can do what some players are doing and AFK farm leather and such in Mount Maelstrom killing nightmare court. I’ve seen them having their heal skill in auto cast which may prevent the game from auto-logging them to the character select screen. Another place that I have seen people is in Harathi Hinterlands killing centaurs.

I haven’t personally done any of these so I can’t vouch what the gold per hour is but it appears to be something that can be done AFK. You’ll just need to be on a class such as a ranger so you can use your pets to kill them. You’ll get the various loot bags which can contain the expensive materials.

Another option would be to do this on a character that matches the level for that area so the weapon/armor drops are of that range. You can then salvage them for those expensive components.

If this is “sanctioned”, which most people assume it to be given the rise in what we’re seeing across Tyria and the mish-mosh responses on the issue ( here and here ) can it be clarified and the mods/staff/Michael Henninger/ Chris Cleary/Gaile Gray add that to a sticky somewhere so these aren’t popping up? At least get a merge going?

The problem is how do you sanction this? Why would you call it afk-farming? Consider this situation.

A dual monitor set-up where you watch netfix and refresh minions. You’re not afk – you’re in game.
You’re not botting (since you the person is doing the stuff) and you’re not using a macro.

You’re basically playing really, really poorly – with very very little interaction with the game – but is it abuse? I’d say no.

There’s no specific “minimum amount of interaction with the game requirement” for you to be considered a-ok – so Anet can’t really do anything about it unless there’s irrefutable absolute concrete proof that the process is automated.

My question to all those who are reporting these farms is this:
How do you distinguish between a human doing what I described above and a bot?

Harper.4173:

My question to all those who are reporting these farms is this:
How do you distinguish between a human doing what I described above and a bot?

We players can’t distinguish it. That’s up to ArenaNet to come to a conclusion whether a player is breaking the ToS or not. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t report if we suspect a player is cheating though.

Chris Cleary

If you believe that you have run into a player who is cheating, please feel free to report them! You can do so by using the right-click report functionality (Report as Bot), and/or by emailing information to exploits@arena.net.

sweatycool.9624:

Apparently someone who made a thread about this awhile ago had this very same concern like what OP has going on. Anet has responded and said this is against the rules with necro vs with a ranger pet where Anet said this is working as attended, which I really don’t know what that means.

The difference is that necro, to make it work, needs to automate minion respawn, which is against the rules.
Also, automating anything (even putting heal skill on auto) that circumvents autologout feature in itself is against the rules (people got suspended for this before).

Just letting your char stand there afking with your minions on, killing everything that moves is apparently ok. As long as there’s nothing else going on.

Anet dosen’t need to respond to it. They could say they are against it…

But- How do you begin to start issuing suspensions against these accounts which have no traces of 3rd party software. Everything they are doing fits within the current design and mechanics.

The only thing they could change is how the afk system functions. You have to use an actual ability- Not a trait/Not a pet within a slotted amount of time before being booted to character select. That’s my only suggestion.

This issue has been gaining more momentum for several months now. These threads are good because not only do they showcase that- But the reality is- Anyone of us could easily use our billions of tomes to level up a necro/guard/ranger and do the same exact thing- Without any consequences.

That’s the biggest thing to be taken away from these threads. Loot while you sleep, no means of tracking = No consequences.

You got some work ahead of you Anet.

Dahmerkitten.1385:

But- How do you begin to start issuing suspensions against these accounts which have no traces of 3rd party software. Everything they are doing fits within the current design and mechanics.

Exploits take advantage of existing design/mechanics where the player gets an advantage that was not intended by Anet.

Dahmerkitten.1385:

…
Without any consequences.

That’s the biggest thing to be taken away from these threads. Loot while you sleep, no means of tracking = No consequences.

I would not go so far as to say there wouldn’t be any consequences.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Harper.4173:

My question to all those who are reporting these farms is this:
How do you distinguish between a human doing what I described above and a bot?

We players can’t distinguish it. That’s up to ArenaNet to come to a conclusion whether a player is breaking the ToS or not. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t report if we suspect a player is cheating though.

Chris Cleary

If you believe that you have run into a player who is cheating, please feel free to report them! You can do so by using the right-click report functionality (Report as Bot), and/or by emailing information to exploits@arena.net.

Yes – and it is important that that definition be made public and clear – so people know what’s permitted and what isn’t.

Harper.4173:

penelopehannibal.8947:

Harper.4173:

My question to all those who are reporting these farms is this:
How do you distinguish between a human doing what I described above and a bot?

We players can’t distinguish it. That’s up to ArenaNet to come to a conclusion whether a player is breaking the ToS or not. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t report if we suspect a player is cheating though.

Chris Cleary

If you believe that you have run into a player who is cheating, please feel free to report them! You can do so by using the right-click report functionality (Report as Bot), and/or by emailing information to exploits@arena.net.

Yes – and it is important that that definition be made public and clear – so people know what’s permitted and what isn’t.

Agreed, grey areas never help, though it’s probably a bit difficult for them to actually give a single, straight answer since each decision is made on a case-by-case basis.

The bans have already started.
One of my friends has been farming afk this night (about 5 hours) and he has been banned for 3 hours for using bots. The other farmers with him seem to have been banned too.
Of course, my friend wasn´t using a bot, but it seems that afk farm = bot.
He wasn´t using any skill, he didn´t use the health, he was only afk with minions killing the mobs.
At least, since it was the first time that he was doing this, the ban was only for 3 hours. He could have been banned forever, so he was lucky.

Disconnect timeout is 45 minutes. If your friend did indeed afk farm for 5 hours during night, then either he wasn’t really afk, or (more likely) he did use some disallowed method to circumvent that forced logout.

Astralporing.1957:

Disconnect timeout is 45 minutes. If your friend did indeed afk farm for 5 hours during night, then either he wasn’t really afk, or (more likely) he did use some disallowed method to circumvent that forced logout.

If you have the mastery that takes the items, then you don´t lost connection after 45 min.

[Threads on this topic exist, please continue discussion in one of those. Thanks!]