Guild Wars 2

I belive that is possible for game to differenciate types of disconnect.

So this idea has camed to me after I saw gold farmers who were abusing AFK system by using pets. So I suggest that time of being AFK before disconnection should be shorten or punishment should be taken upon people who were disconnected for example no more than 3 disconnects from being AFK (not disconnect because of weak internet connection issues) and account suspension for next 24h.

This is a terrible idea

Fermi.2409:

This is a terrible idea

Agree completely!

Just yesterday I clicked on my GW2 icon. It turns out in my previous session earlier I had not completely logged off and the window got buried. Rather than an ‘oops’ moment should I have been fearing for losing my account?

No bueno.

I’m not sure what problem you’re trying to solve. Some people afk with a pet won’t impact the economy in any meaningful way. Also, I don’t think this is against the terms of service, so there should be no punishment.

The negative side of this proposal is substantial. People go afk all the time for legitimate reasons. People might be engaged in conversation with a friend on TS and not move for a few minutes, and it would be really annoying if that got them disconnected. If they have to go afk for a few minutes (maybe the pizza delivery guy arrived), they absolutely should not be suspended for any period of time for it.

Suspensions for being afk? ….Really?

I spend about 80% of my time being semi-afk in Lions Arch, watching tv or even working (don’t judge me!) while I occasionally look back to my computer to do something. I don’t want to be suspended for that.

~Park in a safe spot to go use the restroom, come back to find account suspended for being afk.

Wow.

swgs.6195:

I belive that is possible for game to differenciate types of disconnect.

So this idea has camed to me after I saw gold farmers who were abusing AFK system by using pets. So I suggest that time of being AFK before disconnection should be shorten or punishment should be taken upon people who were disconnected for example no more than 3 disconnects from being AFK (not disconnect because of weak internet connection issues) and account suspension for next 24h.

You can report the people that are AFK farming if you think they are abusing it. Here is an Anet response on how they will handle that situation.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-a-clear-statement-re-AFK-farming/page/6#post6161450

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 GMs

If all 3 of these apply to what you are doing, you may get actioned for it.

There is no need to start suspending people that are honestly AFKing.

I’m pretty sure if a ranger itself does not contribute to a kill, it doesn’t get loot or kill credit. Almost positive this was debunked a while ago. Any other such action is just botting and thus nothing would change.

No sense in banning people for being AFK. Even AFK players make the game in cities look healthier and boost player morale and revenue.

As far as discerning types of disconnects… never a good idea. All such ways are exploitable. Cheaters will cheat; there are people out there who effectively put their network connection on a light switch toggle to force a hardware disconnect in some games which treat them differently from logging out.

I went afk one time for hours because my 95 year old father had a medical emergency.
Should I have been suspended for that?
I’m having a hard time trying to think of words to describe what a bad idea this is that won’t get me in trouble.
What about someone playing in the wee hours of the morning that falls asleep at the keyboard?
What about the guy that goes afk to grab a bite, gets distracted, and forgets to come back?
What about the person who is reading the forums while logged in, reads your post, gets upset and spends hours composing a reply only to realize he never logged out?

Downvote into obscurity. There are so many reasons for which this is a bad idea, and I honestly can’t think of one positive reason in support of it. There is already a legitimate way to handle AFK farmers (report and move on).

I’d also like to remind OP that the game bases a user’s inactivity on whether they have moved or used a skill in a set period of time. Therefore, if you are standing still in LA and having an in-depth conversation with others on map chat or guild chat, or both, at a certain point the game will tell you that you will be kicked for inactivity unless you move or use a skill. So by your suggestion, players who are actively engaging with the game would be considered AFK and thus get their accounts suspended simply because they weren’t fighting mobs or running around aimlessly.

Again, downvote into obscurity.

Endless Soul.5178:

~Park in a safe spot to go use the restroom, come back to find account suspended for being afk.

Wow.

My thoughts exactly…

No.

I don’t want to worry about dozing off by mistake, watching a quick video on Youtube/Twitch/whatever, or having to deal with something in real life, only to come back and found I got suspended for being away.

No thank you. Horrible idea.

There’s no need for it when the GM team does a good job of punishing the players involved without the need for it being automatic. The players abusing the system just need reporting in-game via right-click menu and choose ‘Botting’. An automatic ban is a bad idea because innocent AFKers could get wrongly banned. This is why ArenaNet have absolutely no automatic ban whatsoever. Every warning and account suspension is done by a human being under careful review.

drunkenpilot.9837:

Downvote into obscurity. There are so many reasons for which this is a bad idea, and I honestly can’t think of one positive reason in support of it. There is already a legitimate way to handle AFK farmers (report and move on).

I’d also like to remind OP that the game bases a user’s inactivity on whether they have moved or used a skill in a set period of time. Therefore, if you are standing still in LA and having an in-depth conversation with others on map chat or guild chat, or both, at a certain point the game will tell you that you will be kicked for inactivity unless you move or use a skill. So by your suggestion, players who are actively engaging with the game would be considered AFK and thus get their accounts suspended simply because they weren’t fighting mobs or running around aimlessly.

Again, downvote into obscurity.

… suspended for using the trading post, because you forgot to jump up and down like an idiot every so often. Yeah, no.

As much as I appreciate any effort against cheaters, I have to agree with the rest, an automatic system would be horrible.

AFK-Farming with pets is already confirmed to be against the rules in the previously mentioned thread, as long as the character performs any action at all (like autocasting heal as a ranger), and the best anyone can do is to report those people for botting. The game security team will do the rest of the work.

Seems too easy to screw the wrong people over.
Would just talking but not doing anything else count as AFK?
What about role players?
Or simply people sorting out their inventory or browsing the trading post?

Incidentally, last patch seems to have changed something, and i keep being disconnected now after mere 5-10 minutes of inactivity. It seems that the short timeout for WvW maps has been restored, but at the same time the same timeout has been (accidentally?) pushed to pve as well.

Astralporing.1957:

Incidentally, last patch seems to have changed something, and i keep being disconnected now after mere 5-10 minutes of inactivity. It seems that the short timeout for WvW maps has been restored, but at the same time the same timeout has been (accidentally?) pushed to pve as well.

That’s funny since about two or so patches ago I don’t get afk kicked at all. Just last night my wife needed the computer so I just alt tabed out, but then got busy. Woke up this morning and I was still sitting in LA.

simplesimon.2084:

Astralporing.1957:

Incidentally, last patch seems to have changed something, and i keep being disconnected now after mere 5-10 minutes of inactivity. It seems that the short timeout for WvW maps has been restored, but at the same time the same timeout has been (accidentally?) pushed to pve as well.

That’s funny since about two or so patches ago I don’t get afk kicked at all. Just last night my wife needed the computer so I just alt tabed out, but then got busy. Woke up this morning and I was still sitting in LA.

It hadn’t been happening today, so i assume that the next patch fixed that.

In other MMOs with pets, the pet won’t do anything unless you give it a command. This avoids “botting” of pets.

I don’t see why pets should auto-defend when other characters don’t have that.