Guild Wars 2

I’ve been struggling to understand the folks who AFK during Lion’s Arch (Under Attack). It seems to me that the most they will get is 5-25 Alliance Bags (typically 10-15) which is much lower than if they were playing. They could also get far better rewards joining a champ trains or doing dungeons.

(I don’t zerg and can get about 80-130, depending on the class and level.)

Having seen how some folks in GW2 are sensitive about their income and actually count it in gold/min, it doesn’t seem likely that they’d want to AFK if they can play. Therefore, I suspect that the only way this is profitable is if they would normally get nothing from that hour i.e. they are actually asleep or otherwise not actually playing and are using some automation to handle the movement into and out of LA.

This particular LS segment could be coming to an end later but similar events could get similar AFKs. I urge A-net to investigate folks who managed to play for 24hrs and see if anyone is using automation/botting. I cannot use the normal reporting route because there are just too many suspects and the problem is spread out over all servers. I believe this is something only A-net can solve because they have the data. Some could be innocent but others maybe not so. Every bot user banned is a good thing.

Note: It is possible someone could do this for an hour or two (like having a lunch break) but I find it hard to believe that someone would not play and be at the computer every hour just to move their character into LA to AFK.

Added: Come to think of it, its good that this LS segment has been up for 2 weeks. This means that A-net has 2 weeks worth of data to study if they want to pick up on this.

justkoh.4073:

Note: It is possible someone could do this for an hour or two (like having a lunch break) but I find it hard to believe that someone would not play and be at the computer every hour just to move their character into LA to AFK.

It is very likely that this is what is being done, during wintersday in GW1 i did exactly this with one of the quests (the one to get the mini polar bear) ran my char threw to the end then left it to finish, collected rewards and then repeat, all while watching movies or surfing the net (never got the kitten bear)

If you are feeling lazy and you have a background in computer programming you can ahem build one (please don’t put infraction points). Although you get lesser loot from this theoretically, but very few have the time to be online 24/7, so in general botters get more loot than the average player (assuming the average player spends 3-6 hours for gaming each day).

Most of the AFK people are either sitting next to the entrance, or hiding in crevices on the edge of the map. I found one up on a remote rock.So they aren’t botting in any meaningful sense, just taking a reduced loot for zero effort.

Oh, and harming all their fellow players…

Because there is also a thing called real life.
It takes 10 seconds of my time, not the actual 45 minutes or whatever the LA event is on.
A good thing to do? Certainly not. But you benefit from doing it.
It’s quite easy to fix, too, sadly. Just set an afk timer to 1 minute and kick whoever is doing nothing/running in a wall… While technically somebody could set up a run script (run in circles for example), not many people have the ability to do it, and the number of AFK’ers would be greatly cut down. I could even elaborate on the idea, countering the argument “but what if somebody has to go AFK for just 3-5 minutes because of door/phone etc…”. Could be solved with an “AFK bar” which fills up slowly when you play normally and drops heavily if you AFK. Zero and AFK, gets kicked. You get the idea.

There should be a way to kick people AFK from the home server, even more, all AFK should be sent to a single overflow, the game could have some sort of detection that puts you in a queue for the AFK overflow and transfer you if you dont decline, just like a WvW queue or an overflow queue but here you have to decline the transfer or else the game transfers you… I’d love to see all those rewards they would get, HA!

korelg.7862:

There should be a way to kick people AFK from the home server, even more, all AFK should be sent to a single overflow, the game could have some sort of detection that puts you in a queue for the AFK overflow and transfer you if you dont decline, just like a WvW queue or an overflow queue but here you have to decline the transfer or else the game transfers you… I’d love to see all those rewards they would get, HA!

Shame on the game – it has AFK detection which puts players to character select.
After about an hour in PvE, I think? Compared to the duration of such events like Tequatl and LA, it’s pretty silly. Why not a minute(during such events) like it is in PvP?

I can tell you exactly how many of them afk.

example: Is on the computer, doing something else(study work).

keeps an eye on time.
At xx.04 or 05, opens up the game, runs at portal.

leaves game window.
__
some have the decency to at least hide …. but thats what most of them are doing, I actually doubt many are using bots.

Some stay in game and end up chatting/ TP. But I’d say the majority spend 5 minutes every hour to get in and then close game window to do something else.

They have no need to bot.

Yea, I’m sure most AFKers likely have a second monitor and are “surfing the Internet” (porn) while the event goes on.

It is shameful.

The AFKing part.

Possibly the porn too, depending on what kind it is.

Draknar.5748:

Possibly the porn too, depending on what kind it is.

Quaggan

Evalia.7103:

Because there is also a thing called real life.
It takes 10 seconds of my time, not the actual 45 minutes or whatever the LA event is on.
A good thing to do? Certainly not. But you benefit from doing it.
It’s quite easy to fix, too, sadly. Just set an afk timer to 1 minute and kick whoever is doing nothing/running in a wall… While technically somebody could set up a run script (run in circles for example), not many people have the ability to do it, and the number of AFK’ers would be greatly cut down. I could even elaborate on the idea, countering the argument “but what if somebody has to go AFK for just 3-5 minutes because of door/phone etc…”. Could be solved with an “AFK bar” which fills up slowly when you play normally and drops heavily if you AFK. Zero and AFK, gets kicked. You get the idea.

Great idea ! And to show who the ppl were that were afking,lets just put a Huge star on the left side of their chest so we’re able to recognize them in the future !

What they really care is the 1200 reward chest, for a rare chance for Molten Jetpack and whatnot… so in the end they win afking much more then a casual would because they’re there every hour, while doing something else on the computer or watching tv,etc…

willowthewhite.2985:

justkoh.4073:

Note: It is possible someone could do this for an hour or two (like having a lunch break) but I find it hard to believe that someone would not play and be at the computer every hour just to move their character into LA to AFK.

It is very likely that this is what is being done, during wintersday in GW1 i did exactly this with one of the quests (the one to get the mini polar bear) ran my char threw to the end then left it to finish, collected rewards and then repeat, all while watching movies or surfing the net (never got the kitten bear)

Nine Rings for “Lucky”/“Unlucky” is all I say…

The issue for afking is that you get the reward doing nothing. It could be avoided if you are granted only one bug if you hadn’t participated in any event since last bag/encouraged at least few citizens. That mean that you can afk but you’ll get only one (100) bag. Each other – you need to participate – even failing counts. And the more event you participated/more citizen encouraged/more mobs killed – the greater reward.

Also I’d rather provide some info during the event, and the reward would be not nice, easily handed daily chest, but you need to talk with npc after event and answer some question (on basis of info provided in event) It would make even more sense in lore – you don;t get anything granted, but are rewarded by human being.

let’s take a look at a different view here, not the “all afkers are evil” point of view:

What if someone has supported the evacuation for about 30 minutes and suddenly the doorbell/telephone rings. RL incoming. Would you say it’s ok for players like this to port to the entrance and stay afk for the last 15-20 minutes of the event?

It’s possible to do it with your mouse macros.
Enter LA manually at 10 min, activate the macro:

A \/
0.1 s
A /\
299.9 s (5 m)
D \/
0.1 s
D /\
299.9 s (5 m)
repeat 3 times (this is to be active)

S \/ (walk backwards toward the portal LA > Gendarran)
5 s
S /\
1170 s (1190 – ~10s x2 loadscreen) (20 m)
S \/ (walk backwards Gendarran > LA)
5 s
S /\

I don’t do that but it’s really simple, just made this up after i read your post.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

What they really care is the 1200 reward chest, for a rare chance for Molten Jetpack and whatnot… so in the end they win afking much more then a casual would because they’re there every hour, while doing something else on the computer or watching tv,etc…

THIS. This is it and this is all of it, and nothing more.

Caedmon.6798:

Great idea ! And to show who the ppl were that were afking,lets just put a Huge star on the left side of their chest so we’re able to recognize them in the future !

Because it isn’t nice to mark who is “Juden,” a debuff that prevents those caught, (whether visible to others or not) that stops them from getting the big big rewards they do this for is good enough… I have seen similar done in many games for people who bail out of losing pvp mini-games and the like.

FLiP.7680:

It’s possible to do it with your mouse macros.
Enter LA manually at 10 min, activate the macro

When I afk for the Teq camp, I use a folding pocket knife and balance it on the down arrow key… and/or the left/right arrows for moving in circles (anything that can balance and hold down the buttons is fine). And I think macros are technically against policy on “botting” as you personally are not said to be “entering the codes by hand” though, I could be wrong about that…and the same could easily be said about my pocket knife

I do a lot of TP trading and have a perma TP dude. I’ve considered doing it in LA, but thought better of it. It’s just not worth the hassle.
On this note, even being active isn’t comparable to other forms of gold-getting. maybe 150 bags, tops, plus random loot. I generally only get maybe 1-2g worth of stuff and 2 obby shards. I can’t understand why it’s so popular.
Sure, if you get to 1200 citizens, you have a super rare chance at something worth 60g+, but that’s a pretty rare chance. Also, some servers are less active than others (meaning the AFK’ers get in before the active people), so they never get past 600 citizens. Why even finish the event in this case?

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

What they really care is the 1200 reward chest, for a rare chance for Molten Jetpack and whatnot… so in the end they win afking much more then a casual would because they’re there every hour, while doing something else on the computer or watching tv,etc…

So it looks like there is something they’re actually after. That gives them even more motive to be in LA all the time.

The main point still stands. I do not believe a person is capable of being present in LA for days on end without automation (or giving their account particulars to someone else – also against TOS).

To be clear, I am aware that AFK’ing while frowned upon, is not breaking the rules. If they moved their character in manually and then just AFK’ed, that’s not against the rules.

I believe even a macro to simply log-in a character already in LA at, say :08 (so that LA is open) and then wait until the reward is given at :50 to log out and then repeat hour after hour would be illegal; not to even mention more advanced ones that actually walk in and then plant themselves somewhere. This is the kind of thing I hope A-net could look into.

I really wasn’t expecting this thread to hit Godwin’s Law levels so quickly. I probably should have expected it…

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

let’s take a look at a different view here, not the “all afkers are evil” point of view:

What if someone has supported the evacuation for about 30 minutes and suddenly the doorbell/telephone rings. RL incoming. Would you say it’s ok for players like this to port to the entrance and stay afk for the last 15-20 minutes of the event?

Nope—log out—-a couple of minutes to go to bathroom or get a drink is one thing—-anything longer-plpease let the ANET hammer fall.