Please, a clear statement re: AFK farming.
Obviously the solution is to do a once a day type thing similar to Player Owned Ports from RuneScape or Garrisons for WoW, but NOT the exact same as these.
You could say flipping the TP is playing this type of thing, and I would be inclined to agree, but I think you know specifically what I’m talking about.
However, I agree, you shouldn’t be allowed to let your pet AFK farm mobs for a long time, not be kicked for being AFK, your pet is doing the work, not you. Just because this is how these 2 ArenaNet created systems have been discovered to work together does not mean that this isn’t an oversight that occurred when creating the Logistics Mastery.
I see a simple solution here. Pet damage and no character interactions from you, basically what’s happening here, will no longer bypass the AFK timer. You’ll still get kicked.
Also, your pet(s) will automatically change to not attack if you’re registered as having given no input in the past w/e time the Devs would like to go with. I believe the intention of pets was that they would be your companions and fight alongside you in a sort of symbiotic combat relationship, mostly shown by the Ranger, but also with Necromancer.
Leaving the keyboard and letting your pet mauls mobs isn’t this thematic.
Not sure if that might be hard to implement/code. Devs?
Thank you for reinforcing your statement that playing music is allowed. I was already worried.
The core issue here is we don’t want to have players feeling that their main source of income is generated while they are not at the computer. We have already started to see the impact of this in-game and within the community. Not only does this behavior impact players in the world when they run across a pack of unattended farmers, but also the players who are performing the unattended farming. Eventually these players spend less and less time actually playing the game, and more time unattended farming.
Isn’t that a natural consequence of seeing the game as some kind of loot machine? Instead of asking “how do I maximize my gains?” these afk farmers are asking “what’s the least effort I have to put into this?”. Two sides of the same efficiency coin. Seeing the game as loot machine is the kind of mindset that breaks the community. What you’re doing here is banning methods and changing rules, but those are just symptoms.
1) Using skill (1 or more) while AFK
2) AFKing in a place where it is beneficial for your character to be at
3) Unresponsive to interaction with GMsIf all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.
May I have a comprehensive list of “places where it is beneficial for my character to be at”, so I don’t accidentally go to bathroom, answer phone or eat dinner while my character is sitting at those spots?
(edited by Zenith.6403)
-snip-
Could you please comment on the fact that what you are saying is in direct conflict with what “Michael Henninger” “Game Support Lead” said just before?
He clearly stated “Pet Kills & Macro Looting Excepted” i.e. if you’re just using your pet and auto loot, this doesn’t apply to you, only if you are doing more than that.
Can you confirm that what he said was incorrect or did I misunderstand what one of you said in which case I would ask you to reiterate.
Thank you.
the solution to this should be pretty simple
just remove the auto attack feature from the pets
so you need to press a key when they should start attacking someone you have targeted
(edited by Eiffel.8937)
the solution to this should be pretty simple
just remove the auto attack feature from the pets
so we need to press a key when they should attack someone
What if they switch to turret engies then?
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
turrets cant be healed via your healskill so it should not take that long till they are down I think
turrets cant be healed via your healskill so it should not take that long till they are down I think
It’s been done in the past. It’s probably not as efficient as the current methods but if pets are nerfed it could come back.
Is an engineer going afk with turrets up considered an exploit?
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
-snip-
Could you please comment on the fact that what you are saying is in direct conflict with what “Michael Henninger” “Game Support Lead” said just before?
He clearly stated “Pet Kills & Macro Looting Excepted” i.e. if you’re just using your pet and auto loot, this doesn’t apply to you, only if you are doing more than that.
Can you confirm that what he said was incorrect or did I misunderstand what one of you said in which case I would ask you to reiterate.
Thank you.
I assume this is the result of their meeting. He is “Game Security Lead” so I imagine he’s just as important as support lead.
Basically the three rules. Don’t get caught doing all 3. You can let your pet loot for you, just don’t meet all three criteria or you may get action taken against you. “May” because obviously they don’t have eyes everywhere.
If anyone chooses to find loopholes around the 3 rules they can do, and they do exist. But they won’t be getting posted here.
Also expect to see “fixed bug where auto loot was preventing afk timeout” in a patch notes in the near future.
hm ok but if you remove autoattack from turrets and spiritweapons and minions and pets
so they dont attack anything unless you have it targeted and actively are attacking it
that should be enough shouldn´t it ?
hm ok but if you remove autoattack from turrets and spiritweapons and minions and pets
so they dont attack anything unless you have it targeted and actively are attacking it
that should be enough shouldn´t it ?
Instead of looking for ways to nerf this and nerf that and make things worse for people that don’t afk farm, how about they just change the part where auto loot keeps afk people in game past the timer and have clear rules about afk farming.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
What you’re suggesting won’t fix it. It’ll just migrate it to a new area. For instance, if they “fixed” the linen thing so it’d end up only being 50 copper a piece, the AFK farmers will just migrate somewhere else, such as gaining cotton, then we’re back to square one.
They’ll AFK farm for the highest priced item they can possibly get. They don’t care if it’s linen, gossamer or pink inflatable moas.
Blood & Merlot [Wine]
…They’ll AFK farm for the highest priced item they can possibly get. They don’t care if it’s linen, gossamer or pink inflatable moas.
Perfect gift for my GF. I want that on the Gemstore NOW.
“Only problem with the Engineer is
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
I would rather us fix the underlying issue with this rather than band-aid the issue by enforcing rules and punishments that don’t solve the issue at all.
The core issue here is we don’t want to have players feeling that their main source of income is generated while they are not at the computer. We have already started to see the impact of this in-game and within the community. Not only does this behavior impact players in the world when they run across a pack of unattended farmers, but also the players who are performing the unattended farming. Eventually these players spend less and less time actually playing the game, and more time unattended farming.
We see the same trends in players that use bots, macros and cheats. It eventually leads to players falling out of the game (from both encountering the impact in the world, or by participating themselves).
While there is an economic impact of having a large number of players farming like this, I’m more more concerned about behavior trends shifting than anything else.
The 3 rules above aren’t just for your protection, they are for everyone’s protection. GMs have been trained to identify and handle these situations, it’s one of the first things they learn. GMs are overly generous on the amount of time that players are given to respond.
As for how we intend on fixing that, some of us had a meeting today to talk about that. While there are some systems working against each other here, we all agreed that we didn’t want to make any changes that anyone would actually run into unless they were no longer at their keyboard for an extended period.
Rest assured, we aren’t going to take away auto-loot in the world, or remove your ability to auto-cast. Everything we implement will only impact players who aren’t actually performing actions. I’m sure when we do implement something, it’ll be in the patch notes to read about. Until then, follow the 3 rules above. After that, they won’t be relevant anymore.
(Automation is still against the rules, unless you are using it to play music in-game)
Suggestion: Bind autoloot to player-action. Player doesnt move, cast, chat, jump, whatever → no autoloot.
Pet kills, player afk → no player action → no autoloot.
The other solution I see that fixes this issue quite easily, is incorporating an afk timer that disables autoloot on 2min or longer afk, enables it again after player action. Gw2 is rather lacking in that regard anyway, compared to other – older – mmos with automatic “away” status etc.
Sure, both suggestions can be easily circumvented via macros, but I think thats not what this is about, right? Someone using macros knows what he does is wrong. Someone that comes back and finds his inventory full after afking for one hour might not realize that he took advantage of a design flaw of autoloot and will most likely be tempted to do it again.
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
What you’re suggesting won’t fix it. It’ll just migrate it to a new area. For instance, if they “fixed” the linen thing so it’d end up only being 50 copper a piece, the AFK farmers will just migrate somewhere else, such as gaining cotton, then we’re back to square one.
They’ll AFK farm for the highest priced item they can possibly get. They don’t care if it’s linen, gossamer or pink inflatable moas.
And why are they farming… ?
Fix the source of the problem and it will cease to exist.
Why exactly are players forced to “Farm” for drops when we have a lovely map event reward that could be tweaked into giving more. This will get people into the game playing the events to get loot. I know that’s like some foreign concept…especially here. Heaven forbid people are rewarded for the actions they take in game.
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
What you’re suggesting won’t fix it. It’ll just migrate it to a new area. For instance, if they “fixed” the linen thing so it’d end up only being 50 copper a piece, the AFK farmers will just migrate somewhere else, such as gaining cotton, then we’re back to square one.
They’ll AFK farm for the highest priced item they can possibly get. They don’t care if it’s linen, gossamer or pink inflatable moas.
And why are they farming… ?
Fix the source of the problem and it will cease to exist.
Why exactly are players forced to “Farm” for drops when we have a lovely map event reward that could be tweaked into giving more. This will get people into the game playing the events to get loot. I know that’s like some foreign concept…especially here. Heaven forbid people are rewarded for the actions they take in game.
They’re not forced to ‘farm’ for drops. Your suggestion merely makes AFK-farming more lucrative as their AFKness pays out more from the events they are standing AFK next to the spawn area of.
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
What you’re suggesting won’t fix it. It’ll just migrate it to a new area. For instance, if they “fixed” the linen thing so it’d end up only being 50 copper a piece, the AFK farmers will just migrate somewhere else, such as gaining cotton, then we’re back to square one.
They’ll AFK farm for the highest priced item they can possibly get. They don’t care if it’s linen, gossamer or pink inflatable moas.
And why are they farming… ?
Fix the source of the problem and it will cease to exist.
Why exactly are players forced to “Farm” for drops when we have a lovely map event reward that could be tweaked into giving more. This will get people into the game playing the events to get loot. I know that’s like some foreign concept…especially here. Heaven forbid people are rewarded for the actions they take in game.
It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s not about farming to get something, it’s about ‘free’ money whilst they’re asleep. If everything cost 1 copper to get, they’ll still do it, because it’s still adding up 1 coppers whilst they’re asleep, and wake up to a lovely windfall in the morning.
If they gave a precursor for every event they successfully complete, they’ll still do it. Why? Because after they’ve woken up and got back to the game, they’ll participate in events as normal anyway. Then night time comes, they park their characters and farm for more coppers. It’s not about how much they’re gaining. It’s about gaining as much as they can whilst they’re not playing the game.
The only way to fix it in your way, is to make everything free.
Blood & Merlot [Wine]
Lets not derail this, the issue that this is about is being AFK while your pets + Auto-loot are active. Intentionally = Suspension, but what about unintentionally? I think the Security lead has a nice reply, but he did not clear up ‘Pets are exception’ posts from the other GMs. what does that even mean?
We all know what this affects (economy) and do not need to discuss this beyond what the topic is.
I’m going to state the obvious here.
You can’t earn money at work while you’re sleeping (I suppose it depends on your job, but I know I can’t at mine, you’d get fired), so why should you be able to walk away from your computer and earn money without being banned (fired in real life stuff)???
Use your head.
This is not a proper clarification. If this was a court of law
If.
This is not a proper clarification. If this was a court of law
It isn’t, and you have no rights here lol.
I’ll pitch in on this thread, as there seems to be some confusion about this situation.
The auto-cast feature was never intended to be used as an AFK farming mechanism, and usage of the auto-cast feature while AFK is fine as long as it is not used to facilitate unattended gameplay.
Mastery auto-loot also stopping players from being flagged afk seems like a bug instead of a feature, and I’ll be sure to bring it up today while we have a chat about this internally.
1) Using skill (1 or more) while AFK
2) AFKing in a place where it is beneficial for your character to be at
3) Unresponsive to interaction with GMsIf all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.
You should probably mention that even if All 3 (AKA no autocast skill) don’t apply GMs will still screw with you by forcing you offline (Another client has logged into this account) and moving your character.
I know it’s not an ‘action’ taken against the account but you might as well tell people you’re going to do it.
<3 Tene
I’ve said it before
Farmers always escalate their making nuisances of themselves until the devs come in and ruin it for everyone.
Lets not derail this, the issue that this is about is being AFK while your pets + Auto-loot are active. Intentionally = Suspension, but what about unintentionally?
I’d like to think the GMs are savvy enough to know when someone’s doing it intentionally and when someone isn’t; I know as an ex-GM myself in a couple of other games that you’re generally given good guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour so even if you don’t play the game yourself, you know what is and isn’t ‘normal’ player behaviour. From what Chris said, they’re generous with how long they give players to respond so I highly doubt most of the bans handed out so far are for people who have gone to the toilet etc. Of course, you always get guilty people who will protest their innocence, sometimes in the face of evidence that shows them not just red-handed, but red all over.
And if you DO have to afk, pop to the guild hall or a safe spot as said earlier. If it’s an emergency and you don’t do that, I still find it unlikely you’ll be banned as your behaviour will differ to that of an afk farmer.
“Even if we find a way to save the world from the
dragons, I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever find a way to save us from ourselves.”
dragons, I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever find a way to save us from ourselves.”
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
So they’re afk farming a valuable source to (gasp!) make money.
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
What you’re suggesting won’t fix it. It’ll just migrate it to a new area. For instance, if they “fixed” the linen thing so it’d end up only being 50 copper a piece, the AFK farmers will just migrate somewhere else, such as gaining cotton, then we’re back to square one.
They’ll AFK farm for the highest priced item they can possibly get. They don’t care if it’s linen, gossamer or pink inflatable moas.
And why are they farming… ?
Fix the source of the problem and it will cease to exist.
Why exactly are players forced to “Farm” for drops when we have a lovely map event reward that could be tweaked into giving more. This will get people into the game playing the events to get loot. I know that’s like some foreign concept…especially here. Heaven forbid people are rewarded for the actions they take in game.
They’re not forced to farm.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
Lets not derail this, the issue that this is about is being AFK while your pets + Auto-loot are active. Intentionally = Suspension, but what about unintentionally?
I’d like to think the GMs are savvy enough to know when someone’s doing it intentionally and when someone isn’t; I know as an ex-GM myself in a couple of other games that you’re generally given good guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour so even if you don’t play the game yourself, you know what is and isn’t ‘normal’ player behaviour. From what Chris said, they’re generous with how long they give players to respond so I highly doubt most of the bans handed out so far are for people who have gone to the toilet etc. Of course, you always get guilty people who will protest their innocence, sometimes in the face of evidence that shows them not just red-handed, but red all over.
yea sure, But the GM’s in this game are not united across the subjects. Take Gem store reimbursements, I had 2 GM’s deny it, and a 3rd approve it after biting their heads off. Sure, that’s just one small example but its been like that for the last couple of years on pretty much every GM based action in my experience. We have GMs that care and listen to the customers and interact(even if the customer is NOT right), and we have GMs that are quick to do what they want and completely ignore you until you push back (and sometimes harder then you want to).
Until that changes, we cannot trust their judgements so blindly. which is why we need clarification that we can site as a source for when GM’s just ‘feel like it’ on their actions.
Lets not derail this, the issue that this is about is being AFK while your pets + Auto-loot are active. Intentionally = Suspension, but what about unintentionally?
I’d like to think the GMs are savvy enough to know when someone’s doing it intentionally and when someone isn’t; I know as an ex-GM myself in a couple of other games that you’re generally given good guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour so even if you don’t play the game yourself, you know what is and isn’t ‘normal’ player behaviour. From what Chris said, they’re generous with how long they give players to respond so I highly doubt most of the bans handed out so far are for people who have gone to the toilet etc. Of course, you always get guilty people who will protest their innocence, sometimes in the face of evidence that shows them not just red-handed, but red all over.
yea sure, But the GM’s in this game are not united across the subjects. Take Gem store reimbursements, I had 2 GM’s deny it, and a 3rd approve it after biting their heads off. Sure, that’s just one small example but its been like that for the last couple of years on pretty much every GM based action in my experience. We have GMs that care and listen to the customers and interact(even if the customer is NOT right), and we have GMs that are quick to do what they want and completely ignore you until you push back (and sometimes harder then you want to).
Until that changes, we cannot trust their judgements so blindly. which is why we need clarification that we can site as a source for when GM’s just ‘feel like it’ on their actions.
You forget that players have to report them first. If someone is intentionally AFK farming, the chances are, about 12 players have reported the same AFK farmer.°
If someone is mistakenly reported as an AFK farmer, they’ll probably only have been reported by one or two players at the most. Then a GM looks at it, and I’m sure they’re clever enough to distinguish the difference between the two.
(°I am by no means saying that actions are taken by multiple reports alone – each decision they do is still made after a human GM reviews the report, whether 1 person reports, or 1,000 people do)
Blood & Merlot [Wine]
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
This. Really. I’d say THIS is the main reason behind the majority of AFK-farming people. You need those resources for “endgame” gear, which is absolutely necessary for things like fractals and raids and getting it via “normal” farming (that is, actively running around, killing things) actually gets you less of those resources than going AFK. And , as stated before, AFK = zero effort.
That’d be the main problem. Most people do not want to extensively farm. Most people want to play the game they bought and invested time and further money into.
How about putting reward chests with a reasonable ammount (not just 1-5 scraps) of crafting materials into, let’s say dungeon rewards? Fractals? A selectable chest just like the once-a-day HoT hero chests. Just resource-oriented. Chest of tier X cloth/leather/ ore/wood… Yes, there already are crafting bags, but as far as I can tell they do not give the basic materials.
Do something more fun than either running around for two hours killing the same mobs over and over again or going AFK for hour and a half and get what you need .
Positive reinforcement instead of an endless ‘hunt’ for the few people who truly just want to stand in place and listen to the swoosh of their autoattack.
P.S.:
They’re not forced to farm.
Sure… they can also get the mats from the TP where their low drop rate drives prices up. So they need gold. Whiiich you can get in viable ammounts only by – you guessed it – farming.
Or playing the TP. Because everyone loves when the best source of income in a MMORPG is maintaining excel sheets for a virtual stock market.
(edited by Sigmar.8614)
P.S.:
They’re not forced to farm.
Sure… they can also get the mats from the TP where their low drop rate drives prices up. So they need gold. Whiiich you can get in viable ammounts only by – you guessed it – farming.
Or playing the TP. Because everyone loves when the best source of income in a MMORPG is maintaining excel sheets for a virtual stock market.
Oh please. Mats are cheap. Linen is 5.69 silver each. You get 2 gold doing dailies, and another gold for tequatl, plus all the salvage mats. That gets you 52 linen for basically existing each day. Or you can do what I do and convert karma into cloth/leather grabbing gloves, mystic forge them, salvage the products, and end up with stacks upon stacks of the stuff. You get them as loot for running events in the lower level zones, as well as the level appropriate dungeons. Or if you want to get really technical, you can just get a level 50 character and have them open all of the various boxes and bags you get, so you’ll be showered in the stuff.
There’s no grand economic crises that suddenly makes AFK farmers into robin hood. That’s just license for greed and laziness. Gold rains from the sky, and the mats rain from the sky, and you don’t even “need” it at all. If you ran fractals you’d learn that ascended armor and weapons drops are actually quite common.
I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.
You could start by working on the baseline economic problems that cause people to auto farm. That’d be nice. So it likely wont happen.
That’s just absurd. The “baseline economic problem” is that people want money. Period. You can’t fix that.
Or maybe just maybe there are people farming the materials there whose rate of acquisition are substandard compared to their usage. You know like leather/linen.
But you’re right it’s absurd that we have nice things.
This. Really. I’d say THIS is the main reason behind the majority of AFK-farming people. You need those resources for “endgame” gear, which is absolutely necessary for things like fractals and raids and getting it via “normal” farming (that is, actively running around, killing things) actually gets you less of those resources than going AFK. And , as stated before, AFK = zero effort.
That’d be the main problem. Most people do not want to extensively farm. Most people want to play the game they bought and invested time and further money into.How about putting reward chests with a reasonable ammount (not just 1-5 scraps) of crafting materials into, let’s say dungeon rewards? Fractals? A selectable chest just like the once-a-day HoT hero chests. Just resource-oriented. Chest of tier X cloth/leather/ ore/wood… Yes, there already are crafting bags, but as far as I can tell they do not give the basic materials.
Do something more fun than either running around for two hours killing the same mobs over and over again or going AFK for hour and a half and get what you need .
Positive reinforcement instead of an endless ‘hunt’ for the few people who truly just want to stand in place and listen to the swoosh of their autoattack.P.S.:
They’re not forced to farm.
Sure… they can also get the mats from the TP where their low drop rate drives prices up. So they need gold. Whiiich you can get in viable ammounts only by – you guessed it – farming.
Or playing the TP. Because everyone loves when the best source of income in a MMORPG is maintaining excel sheets for a virtual stock market.
They’ll still AFK farm when they aren’t able to actively play.
You’ve just moved the majority of the mats from the open world to the instances. You’ll increase the perceived negativity and elitism in dungeons and fractals as the AFK farmers will move to farming dungeons and fractals when they have time to actively play. And they’ll be the ones to bite off the player who made a mistake’s head. Because they just reduced the profit they get.
Now players to get the end game gear they want, players have to play dungeons and fractals. Because they’d cull the drop rate of those mats in the open world to keep the economy from tanking on those mats. Which reduces the number of players in the open world. Which means the maps that require map full of players to have a successful meta, get screwed because all of the players need the mats that have been shifted to dungeons and fractals and can no longer be reasonably obtained in the open world.
But the AFK farmers? They’ll do dungeons and fractals while they can actively play. Then go AFK farm when they can’t. Because while the profit may be greatly reduced. It’s still greater than the 0 they get if they don’t.
The best solution is the one that keeps them from AFK farming in the first place without affecting innocent players.
The only way to make people stop farming completely is to remove the need for gold. And that means making it so darn easy to get whatever you might need in the game that trading is essentially meaningless. Unfortunately, that also means that things like luxury or prestige items need to go. By level 80, everybody has access to full Ascended gear. Players get a Legendary weapon for free on their character’s birthdays. Stuff like that.
Now, I wouldn’t mind playing in a game like that, because I frankly couldn’t give a skritt about prestige or item rarity. I acquire skins and items based on whether I like how it looks. How expensive or rare it is makes absolutely no difference to me. (For instance, I recently completed The Ascension, and the very first thing I did was to instantly reskin it to the same backpack skin that I’ve been using for 2 years now. I got it purely because I wanted the changeable stats. Whether or not anybody else knows I’m wearing a Legendary backpack is not my concern.)
But I also know that I’m very much an oddity among players. Most people crave being able to stand out from the crowd, to be able to brag, or show off their wealth and status. So ANet won’t be able to go down this route; it would be game suicide. While I do feel that the current means to acquire various materials are more onerous than they need to be, any solutions they might take would have to be baby steps.
That said, would it really be so bad to allow us to salvage items from Heart karma merchants directly? If you do Fractals or WvW frequently, you’re likely to be drowning in far more karma than you need. Letting us salvage those Heart items directly would give us a far more quicker and efficient means of generating low level mats, and it’s not like stuff like Minor Sigils or Runes have had any trade value for years now. I’m pretty certain 99.9% of players who get those just insta-merch them for 16 copper. If concern over open world maps getting abandoned is an issue, then bump up the karma rewards for events by several times, turning them into an alternative means of getting karma for players who don’t like Fractals or WvW.
The only way to make people stop farming completely is to remove the need for gold.
This thread isn’t about farming though, it is about afk farming. Let’s not get into a general “pro or anti farming in games” discussion. Afk farming is done in addition to normal gameplay, at times when a player normally would not play at all. It is not something a player will choose to do instead of playing the game and it should not influence the reward structure of the game. It is forbidden and should be sanctioned like other offense against the rules. As long as that happens, there should be no problem. I believe the biggest problem with afk farming is that ArenaNet has been a little sloppy when it comes to catching and sanctioning players doing it in the past, as well as communicating that it breaks the rules when it got out of hand after the introduction of the loot mastery.
Youtube “L2villagejester”.
People using belittling wording like whining/qqing" are not taken seriously by me
Same for people posting only to tell others not to post (“deal with it”-posts)
People using belittling wording like whining/qqing" are not taken seriously by me
Same for people posting only to tell others not to post (“deal with it”-posts)
when i put in a ticket about this here is the response i got.
Hello John,
Thank you for contacting us. Typically, AFK macroing is done with third party programs. This does not have to include programs that you’ve downloaded specifically for this purpose. Programs such as ones received from gaming mice and keyboards are included in this category. There is no way in-game to AFK Macro without the assistance of any other software. This is the reason for the warning/suspension. If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know.
Regards,
GM Toxic Reign
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
here is my response
when running a necromancer as a reaper with a greatsword the number 4 skill is nightfall. when it is selected as the auto attack it will go off as soon as it resets. this is apart of the game mechanic. no third party program is needed. so yes afk macro can be done without any third party program. i also do not appreciate being called a lier when i honestly told you how it is done.
I’m surprised this is an issue. I’ve said this on other threads, but there is already a diminishing returns anti farming code in place. Additionally, even if people are making some gold doing this, these players are at the very bottom of the barrel. There are no rich afk farmers. The amount of loot I can make in two hours of actual gametime is more than a weeks of AFK farm. This is because after a few hours the loot dwindles down to nothing because of said code. So…they’re not affecting the economy, they’re not making more gold than you as a player, and should be ignored in my opinion.
I’m surprised this is an issue. I’ve said this on other threads, but there is already a diminishing returns anti farming code in place. Additionally, even if people are making some gold doing this, these players are at the very bottom of the barrel. There are no rich afk farmers. The amount of loot I can make in two hours of actual gametime is more than a weeks of AFK farm. This is because after a few hours the loot dwindles down to nothing because of said code. So…they’re not affecting the economy, they’re not making more gold than you as a player, and should be ignored in my opinion.
If one afk-farms in addition to regular game-play, of course one makes more money than someone who does not. The issue is unattended game-play while sleeping, or at work; the issue is not afk-farming instead of regular play.
I don’t care how little the returns are, I don’t think the Devs had in mind creating a game no one actually plays, but rather just creates a character and sets it in motion, reaping the loot/gold/benefits once a day or once a week. To me, anyway, that would just seem silly.
Hopefully a new diminishing returns, would take care of this.
Hopefully a new diminishing returns, would take care of this.
I hope not because that would affect every player in a map for a certain length of time.
Blood & Merlot [Wine]
I would personally start with fixing the bug that allows players to circumvent the idle timer. That would significantly reduce the number of players who are AFK farming.
I would personally start with fixing the bug that allows players to circumvent the idle timer. That would significantly reduce the number of players who are AFK farming.
I strongly suspect that last nights Cow Pie Price update was in fact the afk bug fix. I’m not in the position to test it – we may not hear anything.
I just kite a few extra bad guys over there and step back and watch the fun.
—
Arise my pretty minion!
Arise my pretty minion!
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2016-06-01#General
The inactivity timer is no longer impacted by autoloot.
It’s a good start. Autoloot will no longer prevent the game from logging you out for being AFK.
There’s something charming about rangers.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2016-06-01#General
The inactivity timer is no longer impacted by autoloot.
It’s a good start. Autoloot will no longer prevent the game from logging you out for being AFK.
Agreed, unfortunately the macro to have your character take a “baby step” to reset the timer is still active.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2016-06-01#General
The inactivity timer is no longer impacted by autoloot.
It’s a good start. Autoloot will no longer prevent the game from logging you out for being AFK.
Agreed, unfortunately the macro to have your character take a “baby step” to reset the timer is still active.
Perhaps, but then we can Report for Botting if we still see AFK Farmers. Then ArenaNet themselves can do the rest.
Blood & Merlot [Wine]
It’s just as well that they apply a number of factors to determine if someone’s acting improperly, if “taking a baby step” (or “twitching” as I call it) is considered bad. I mean yes, as a macro it would be bad. But since the game does not consider chat box entries to show activity, in RP you have to occasionally remember to “twitch” — and remind the others in the scene to do it as well — or you’ll find yourself booted to character login. If I’m in Rata Sum after a meta run and have my bags cleared and am just chatting in /g or /p, observers will see me occasionally do that one small step forward or back and might decide I’m doing something to stay logged in while afk.
Fortunately, one can’t farm in cities or areas conducive to RP, so the other factors aren’t present.
I’ll pitch in on this thread, as there seems to be some confusion about this situation.
The auto-cast feature was never intended to be used as an AFK farming mechanism, and usage of the auto-cast feature while AFK is fine as long as it is not used to facilitate unattended gameplay.
Mastery auto-loot also stopping players from being flagged afk seems like a bug instead of a feature, and I’ll be sure to bring it up today while we have a chat about this internally.
1) Using skill (1 or more) while AFK
2) AFKing in a place where it is beneficial for your character to be at
3) Unresponsive to interaction with GMsIf all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.
There are some thing’s here that i am Curious about.
Isnt skill 1 Activated for Auto-Cast by default on all Account’s/characters ?
And also in some cases (as far as i know) Many Skill’s “Even on Auto-Cast”
has to be manually activated for each new Target that the user would want to
attack .. with that in mind it wouldnt work to have some skills on Auto-Cast
while AFK.
So if for example you where investigated by a GM while AFK in a location that
was Advantageous to you (With Auto-Cast Turned on but as above described not
funktional in a way as to facilitate Unattended Gameplay) . . and you where
not responding to the GM (As you are AFK) . . and in addition to this there
is anouther Funktion (Like Enemy uses fear or in other ways make your
character move while being AFK) that would/could interrupt the Auto-Logout
Funktion . . .
I wonder if a player could,would or should get actioned in the above mentioned
Scenario.
(Also im not trying to give anyone any ideas for how to AFK-Farm here)
______________________________________________________________________________
¥ameon
I’ll pitch in on this thread, as there seems to be some confusion about this situation.
The auto-cast feature was never intended to be used as an AFK farming mechanism, and usage of the auto-cast feature while AFK is fine as long as it is not used to facilitate unattended gameplay.
Mastery auto-loot also stopping players from being flagged afk seems like a bug instead of a feature, and I’ll be sure to bring it up today while we have a chat about this internally.
1) Using skill (1 or more) while AFK
2) AFKing in a place where it is beneficial for your character to be at
3) Unresponsive to interaction with GMsIf all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.
There are some thing’s here that i am Curious about.
Isnt skill 1 Activated for Auto-Cast by default on all Account’s/characters ?
And also in some cases (as far as i know) Many Skill’s “Even on Auto-Cast”
has to be manually activated for each new Target that the user would want to
attack .. with that in mind it wouldnt work to have some skills on Auto-Cast
while AFK.So if for example you where investigated by a GM while AFK in a location that
was Advantageous to you (With Auto-Cast Turned on but as above described not
funktional in a way as to facilitate Unattended Gameplay) . . and you where
not responding to the GM (As you are AFK) . . and in addition to this there
is anouther Funktion (Like Enemy uses fear or in other ways make your
character move while being AFK) that would/could interrupt the Auto-Logout
Funktion . . .I wonder if a player could,would or should get actioned in the above mentioned
Scenario.(Also im not trying to give anyone any ideas for how to AFK-Farm here)
______________________________________________________________________________
¥ameon
Why necro an 11 month old thread?
[CG {EU} – Leader] Leading farm guild~193 cRanger~
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I’ll pitch in on this thread, as there seems to be some confusion about this situation.
The auto-cast feature was never intended to be used as an AFK farming mechanism, and usage of the auto-cast feature while AFK is fine as long as it is not used to facilitate unattended gameplay.
Mastery auto-loot also stopping players from being flagged afk seems like a bug instead of a feature, and I’ll be sure to bring it up today while we have a chat about this internally.
1) Using skill (1 or more) while AFK
2) AFKing in a place where it is beneficial for your character to be at
3) Unresponsive to interaction with GMsIf all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.
There are some thing’s here that i am Curious about.
Isnt skill 1 Activated for Auto-Cast by default on all Account’s/characters ?
And also in some cases (as far as i know) Many Skill’s “Even on Auto-Cast”
has to be manually activated for each new Target that the user would want to
attack .. with that in mind it wouldnt work to have some skills on Auto-Cast
while AFK.So if for example you where investigated by a GM while AFK in a location that
was Advantageous to you (With Auto-Cast Turned on but as above described not
funktional in a way as to facilitate Unattended Gameplay) . . and you where
not responding to the GM (As you are AFK) . . and in addition to this there
is anouther Funktion (Like Enemy uses fear or in other ways make your
character move while being AFK) that would/could interrupt the Auto-Logout
Funktion . . .I wonder if a player could,would or should get actioned in the above mentioned
Scenario.(Also im not trying to give anyone any ideas for how to AFK-Farm here)
______________________________________________________________________________
¥ameonWhy necro an 11 month old thread?
I had some questions regarding this Topic .. so rather than making a whole
new Thread i thought i would make use of this allready existing one.
Hope that makes sence.
______________________________________________________________________________
¥ameon
Isnt skill 1 Activated for Auto-Cast by default on all Account’s/characters ?
Yes, but skill one doesn’t work automatically unless you have a target and start the skill going. Once the target is dead, the auto cast stops so it’s not something that can be used afk.
What he’s talking about isn’t skill one but any other skill, including a utility skill, that doesn’t require a target to use when set up to auto cast and that can kill a mob.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
That is what i thought it meant as well.
But let’s say that someone recently may have had some . . Issues.
And would like to get some clarification regarding this above
mentioned Scenario (HopeFully from a DEV) to prevent future
confusion and Imperial Entanglements.
______________________________________________________________________________
¥ameon