Guild Wars 2

People are now mad because of the nerf at lake doric (for those who don’t know, trebuchets now shot even at the entrance gate) they’re saying they’re going to BFF now to continue AFK farm. It is comunity’s fault in first place that be got punished this way for abusing AGAIN in a farm Anet gave us the option to use.

It happened with Auric Basin, it happened with Lake Doric and it WILL happen to Bitterfrost Frontier if “we” keep doing this. Because of one, we all have to pay, and it’s not fair.

At least I must admit that, having invisible trebuchets aiming at me while farming leather up the hill added some more mechanics where I’m forced to take the maximum playstyle of my elementalist. That’s why I like it more with trebs now.

ToraSempai.8946:

People are now mad because of the nerf at lake doric (for those who don’t know, trebuchets now shot even at the entrance gate) they’re saying they’re going to BFF now to continue AFK farm. It is comunity’s fault in first place that be got punished this way for abusing AGAIN in a farm Anet gave us the option to use.

No, it’s Anet’s fault that they designed the farm to be unappealing when done the “intended” way.

They should’ve made a proper event chain that can be repeated rather than elite trashmobs being the focus of the farming.

Blaming the community when the real fault here is the designers choosing to use band-aid fixes for problems that need much different solutions.

Farming by itself isnt bad, however when the problem could be solved without needed to create designated farm spots you should do that. In short fix the economic issues with numbers not by creating “Farms”.

Is there some compelling reason that players require rewards from targets their minions kill with zero input from the player? It really doesn’t seem worth the constant gripe-fests on the forums and wasted development resources attempting to stop people from doing something that your game allows them to do! Just kill it already.

The trick with AFKing is that the more people do it, the more they get used to doing it and the more likely they’ll be to resort to actual botting. Why not just join the toxic spore farmers and make ~1g/hour per character?

Maybe Anet should have made the farm-as-intended actually good at the thing they intended it for, then people would actually do it.

TexZero.7910:

Blaming the community when the real fault here is the designers choosing to use band-aid fixes for problems that need much different solutions.

Farming by itself isnt bad, however when the problem could be solved without needed to create designated farm spots you should do that. In short fix the economic issues with numbers not by creating “Farms”.

+Infinity Preach it!

I agree.

However, humans are really rotten inside, as a rule. When an exploit exists, people will use it. So, ANet has to be the police force.

On the flip side, Bitterfrost really does need to be nerfed. There are far too many treasures available without combat. It really needs a participation counter, and the numbers of chests that show up would be based on your percentage of participation. Further, participation needs to be per character per map instance, not per account.

Those are are saying the original farm was not done, or no one was doing it are simply wrong. Before the engineer farm, there was almost never a time of day when that area wasn’t being farmed, and I know because I’ve done it at almost every time of day.

The ease of the engineer farm killed it, along with now so many people being in WvW. But the run itself was fine and it was being done pretty much constantly.

I also believe it would have continued to be done, if not for the engie farm> Once you break momentum for that sort of thing, it almost never recovers.

It’s always the developer’s fault and I’m not being facetious.

It’s not their job to decide how people want to play the game. Other MMO developers seldom take action against farming spots, why the kitten does Anet intervene in matters that do not directly concern them?

Mavis.1463:

It’s always the developer’s fault and I’m not being facetious.

It’s not their job to decide how people want to play the game. Other MMO developers seldom take action against farming spots, why the kitten does Anet intervene in matters that do not directly concern them?

/facepalm…

Anets developers made the game… it is their ONLY job to decide how people can play the game. No developers no game no game noone can even play it.

So their only job is meddling and deciding how people should play their game. That explains why they never bother fixing bugs, improving game modes like PvP and whatnot. They’re too busy adding stupid kitten to spite their dwindling playerbase.

Lets create a farm spot. Wait, people are farming? Punish everyone.
ggwp

FrizzFreston.5290:

Mavis.1463:

It’s always the developer’s fault and I’m not being facetious.

It’s not their job to decide how people want to play the game. Other MMO developers seldom take action against farming spots, why the kitten does Anet intervene in matters that do not directly concern them?

/facepalm…

Anets developers made the game… it is their ONLY job to decide how people can play the game. No developers no game no game noone can even play it.

As much as I like things that anet does, I have to agree with you.

This is always going to exist. Asking players not exploit the game is like herding cats. Players are working towards what advantages they can get to maximize gameplay, and a farm that can be exploited is an open invitation to be exploited.

So let me take you back to the start of Lake Doric. Hardened leather is extremely costly for a basic T6 mat, players have been asking for solutions. For every gossamer patch to make the insignia you make it requires 5 Cured Hardened Leather which in turn takes 15 Hardened Leather Scraps. Unlike Ancient Wood or Gossomer Scraps, Hardened Leather and precursor Thick Leather have extremely low drop rates.

So when they made the farm in Lake Doric they wanted people to play the meta and farm the area. And here’s there big mistake, they put all the centaur that are the only mob that drops leather well in one place except for dynamic events elsewhere on the map. So the only realistic farm for leather became the camp. By holing leather up in one spot they had to make elites in excess to discourage players hanging around and farming in the way of the meta. Now they’ve added the trebuchets to stop engineers from farming the lower area where the elites can’t two shot you. If they wanted to eliminate this option they should have spread the centaur out through the zone with the White Mantle. Now you can explore and move around the map and get leather at a decent rate, vs holing up in one spot. Bears, deer, and wolves don’t drop leather at a decent rate, these are things one would reasonably believe would be the opposite since in real life we get leather from all of them.

Now here’s a solution that doesn’t require this obsession with fixing farming, they could have halved the demand of leather in insignias and reduced the cost of leather for all players in one go. So which is the better choice? Creating a special farming zone (which detracts from teams making fun game zones) or fixing the high demand of leather (while preserving story and gameplay)?

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

or fixing the high demand of leather (while preserving story and gameplay)?

That would actually require some effort from Arenanet. Plus, if they reduce the demand for t6 leather how will they tempt players to buy gems and skip the grind?

Mavis.1463

If you half the leather requirement of Gossamer Patches, you’re done. This vs a meta built around a farm that restricts design of gameplay and story within the LS of Lake Doric. It’s way more simple and gives them more freedom to focus on stories and new skins for the store. There hasn’t been a good armor skin in years that is bought with gems.

Egrimm Van Horstmann.7921:

(snip)
For every gossamer patch to make the insignia you make it requires 5 Cured Hardened Leather which in turn takes 15 Hardened Leather Scraps. Unlike Ancient Wood or Gossomer Scraps, Hardened Leather and precursor Thick Leather have extremely low drop rates.
(snip)

Double your requirements – 5 Gossamer patches require 10 Cured Hardened Leather, which translates to 30 Hardened Leather Sections for EACH gossamer insignia. Other than that, yeah, you’re right.

Mavis.1463:

It’s always the developer’s fault and I’m not being facetious.

It’s not their job to decide how people want to play the game. Other MMO developers seldom take action against farming spots, why the kitten does Anet intervene in matters that do not directly concern them?

Yeah? You’ve played an MMO that doesn’t patch loot exploits when they grow large enough that everyone is aware of them and it begins impacting other areas of the game? Which game was that? Because I’ve sure never played an MMO that allows that to continue. If anything, the AB MM fix was so long in coming ANet is the best example I can think of of a company that looks the other way for too long!

It’s on Anet, they didn’t put enough design consideration into the farms. They design the class mechanics (for example those evil engineers, necromancers and rangers) and they design the farm encounter. If they don’t consider how one will affect the other before releasing the farm into the game that is their failure, not players of the ‘evil’ classes who are playing their class as Anet designed in an area Anet designed.

I do get it, it is annoying to have afk-esque farmers around. But lay the blame where it belongs, not at the feet of players playing a way sanctioned by Anet in an area sanctioned for Anet for that purpose.

Moonyeti.3296:

I do get it, it is annoying to have afk-esque farmers around. But lay the blame where it belongs, not at the feet of players playing a way sanctioned by Anet in an area sanctioned for Anet for that purpose.

Just as it’s on Anet that they placed trebuchets to “fix” said behaviour. Not people who complained about it.

I just realised this is also a product of autoloot. Without autoloot you can’t AFk as efficiently because it doesnt go directly into your inventory.

Even more so its a result of the not so great afk detection gw2 has. You’re determined to not be afk if you use a skill, or move. You can do both without actually being present at your keyboard. On the flipside you can be afk kicked while doing neither of those things, but still giving the game input, like chatting or using a crafting station. If the game required actual input for you to not be considered afk, it would solve a lot (though not all) of the afk farmer issues. Helping futher fix issues would be for a small timer, something like 5 minutes, for the game to consider you afk, after this period you stop getting any rewards, but not being kicked from the game for the full hour we have now. At least then everyone would have to farm the way engineers were, needing to be there at least once every 5 minutes. (Edit: removed quote because it was messing up the post somehow?)

ToraSempai.8946:

People are now mad because of the nerf at lake doric (for those who don’t know, trebuchets now shot even at the entrance gate) they’re saying they’re going to BFF now to continue AFK farm. It is comunity’s fault in first place that be got punished this way for abusing AGAIN in a farm Anet gave us the option to use.

It happened with Auric Basin, it happened with Lake Doric and it WILL happen to Bitterfrost Frontier if “we” keep doing this. Because of one, we all have to pay, and it’s not fair.

Who said life is fair?

This is a pretty classic scenario. Pleading to the masses won’t change their behaviour. On some basic level, playing a game is finding and using the exploits, the things that are most efficient. This doesn’t only concern damage dealing. The reward/effort ratio is also a measure of efficiency. So people will keep doing it. And I’m not saying that to justify my own decisions. I have never afk farmed and I never will, because I see it as a waste of time. I’d rather have fun in the game and earn less virtual goods than have no fun at all and earn more. However, that’s just my subjective stance and I cannot enforce it on everyone. And neither can you. So brace yourselves, winter is coming to Bitterfrost Frontier. I must admit I’m curious to see how will ANet handle this thematically.

Feanor.2358:

Who said life is fair?

This is a pretty classic scenario. Pleading to the masses won’t change their behaviour. On some basic level, playing a game is finding and using the exploits, the things that are most efficient. This doesn’t only concern damage dealing. The reward/effort ratio is also a measure of efficiency. So people will keep doing it. And I’m not saying that to justify my own decisions. I have never afk farmed and I never will, because I see it as a waste of time. I’d rather have fun in the game and earn less virtual goods than have no fun at all and earn more. However, that’s just my subjective stance and I cannot enforce it on everyone. And neither can you. So brace yourselves, winter is coming to Bitterfrost Frontier. I must admit I’m curious to see how will ANet handle this thematically.

I’m guessing setting the mobs guarding berries to drop no loot or XP (since their point is to harass, not reward) is out of the question.

I mean, if we were going for sensible options, they would have fixed the one formula that causes the 375% leather/cloth disparity in armor crafting before fixing things with a farm and then nerfing it because people were farming. So obviously they will instead resort to some sort of overly complex, high-dev-cost fix that breaks the intended gameplay along with the farming.

AliamRationem.5172:

Is there some compelling reason that players require rewards from targets their minions kill with zero input from the player? It really doesn’t seem worth the constant gripe-fests on the forums and wasted development resources attempting to stop people from doing something that your game allows them to do! Just kill it already.

Yes, the AI that is with you is part of how the class is balanced. It would be like waking up one day and finding out some major mechanic in your favourite class was gone with nothing to replace it.

Vayne.8563:

I also believe it would have continued to be done, if not for the engie farm> Once you break momentum for that sort of thing, it almost never recovers.

It’s a good thing it did. The problem with that area is that it should have never been implemented and only goes to show why splitting the population is a bad thing. Zerging that area became popular within the first few weeks, at which point the odds of seeing people elsewhere lessened each day. When AFKing became popular, the problem only worsened.

I’ve gone to Lake Doric every day and haven’t actually seen more than a few people outside of the farm since the first month. The day after the nerf, there was actually tags and groups of people doing the events again and I haven’t seen a zerg up there since. Lake Doric had previously been the worst populated map in season 3 because of the farm. Content like that should be kept in its own map to not screw everyone else.

FrizzFreston.5290:

I just realised this is also a product of autoloot. Without autoloot you can’t AFk as efficiently because it doesnt go directly into your inventory.

This is correct, and gives me an idea:

What if they turned off auto-loot for any character which hasn’t moved or used a skill in the past X seconds?

That would completely solve the AFK farming problem everywhere in Tyria. It creates a small risk for non-AFK players, if they read the news for too long or something like that, but that seems acceptable to me.

Zanvolt.9406:

Even more so its a result of the not so great afk detection gw2 has. You’re determined to not be afk if you use a skill, or move. You can do both without actually being present at your keyboard.

That would be a violation of the terms of service.

Daddicus.6128:

What if they turned off auto-loot for any character which hasn’t moved or used a skill in the past X seconds?

This suggestion might be onto something. It could work fine even if auto-loot was activated only while moving, especially when there’s a keybind to AOE loot. So, if a player is present and not moving – just press another button to loot or move for auto loot.

perilisk.1874:

I mean, if we were going for sensible options, they would have fixed the one formula that causes the 375% leather/cloth disparity in armor crafting before fixing things with a farm and then nerfing it because people were farming. So obviously they will instead resort to some sort of overly complex, high-dev-cost fix that breaks the intended gameplay along with the farming.

I don’t think it’s that simple. Leather had no value whatsoever before this disparity. Changing this one formula may very well bring back those days and I don’t think this will be healthy for the game economy.

ToraSempai.8946:

People are now mad because of the nerf at lake doric (for those who don’t know, trebuchets now shot even at the entrance gate) they’re saying they’re going to BFF now to continue AFK farm. It is comunity’s fault in first place that be got punished this way for abusing AGAIN in a farm Anet gave us the option to use.

It happened with Auric Basin it happened with Lake Doric and it WILL happen to Bitterfrost Frontier if “we” keep doing this. Because of one, we all have to pay, and it’s not fair.

At least I must admit that, having invisible trebuchets aiming at me while farming leather up the hill added some more mechanics where I’m forced to take the maximum playstyle of my elementalist. That’s why I like it more with trebs now.

What happened with Auric Basin?afaik is a empty map since the nerf,also how “afk” farmers ( not afk at all coz that 1 hour check) ruin your life?

These people who complain about every f… farm have 2k gold +,tons of ascen,legendary stuff . . .and is like "ah kitten new players,don’t care if they have 100g)

Plenty of people still do the Auric Basin meta, you just need to try a little harder to get into an active instance now.

Feanor.2358:

perilisk.1874:

I mean, if we were going for sensible options, they would have fixed the one formula that causes the 375% leather/cloth disparity in armor crafting before fixing things with a farm and then nerfing it because people were farming. So obviously they will instead resort to some sort of overly complex, high-dev-cost fix that breaks the intended gameplay along with the farming.

I don’t think it’s that simple. Leather had no value whatsoever before this disparity. Changing this one formula may very well bring back those days and I don’t think this will be healthy for the game economy.

There are three changes responsible for the disparity. Reverting (or balancing, in the case of patch formula) just one of them will not bring back the previous situation, but it may make the gap between those two types of mats become smaller.

Zanvolt.9406:

Even more so its a result of the not so great afk detection gw2 has. You’re determined to not be afk if you use a skill, or move. You can do both without actually being present at your keyboard. On the flipside you can be afk kicked while doing neither of those things, but still giving the game input, like chatting or using a crafting station. If the game required actual input for you to not be considered afk, it would solve a lot (though not all) of the afk farmer issues. Helping futher fix issues would be for a small timer, something like 5 minutes, for the game to consider you afk, after this period you stop getting any rewards, but not being kicked from the game for the full hour we have now. At least then everyone would have to farm the way engineers were, needing to be there at least once every 5 minutes. (Edit: removed quote because it was messing up the post somehow?)

Thats only treating the symptom, not the cause. This is the Chain of events of that lead to this current situation….

Up to addition of Fractals and Ascended gear, there was very little practical use for anything less then T6 mats, other then promoting T5 to T6. To promote the lesser tiers upward (which would had been the practical solution) costed too much due to the tiny supply of Dust as a rare drop-only material. Anet has absolutely no plan to deal with low tier goods on the TP, as players leveled to quickly to make use of, much less invest, in a good set of leveling gear.

While this was going on, very few people were involved with crafting at the T6 level, due to the general scarcity of T6 Fine mats due to their drop rates. Dust was a massive bottle neck, and generating T6 mats in general was difficult due to how Diminishing returns can, and still does kick in pretty quickly on Tyrian maps. (I’m going to assume everyone here understands the level relevant drop tables) Once people realized certain mob dense events were the only way to get mats in even marginally useful quantities, players would (and still do) try to fail events to get certain event chains to spawn on the lowest timers possible. Grenth was very popular for this, once enough of the pubic realized the potential and got on board the fail train. But because of how quickly DR kicks in under these conditions (and weak understanding of its existence by the public), it would take some time for people to get enough LvL80s to rotate for farms. Yet despite all of that, the drop rates weren’t nearly fast enough to meet anything beyond basic crafting demands…. leaving the multitude of Anet’s high gold sinks unused. 250 T6 Fine mats was nigh impossible to farm yourself…. and god help you if needed lode stones in the recipe.

The irony of that state of affairs…. this is partly how Anet intended things to work. What they hadn’t expected was how low the bar had to be set to get people started on crafting in general. The typical casual player can’t generate enough mats for trade to cover the stuff they needed for a high end crafting project…. so many would give up in a couple of months, with the eventual apathy toward the long term projects leading to players quitting. The Game story wasn’t engaging as it needed to be, the experience a little disjointed, the class designs varying wildly in power and entertainment, and the game’s format (which only shows its benefits at high levels, and across multiple characters) was a foreign concept to many players at the time. It was just really hard to find the Game’s primary loop, and a shockingly large % of players never even made it to lvl80 before losing interest….. and a lot of that (which is still a problem to this day), is Anet failing to provide a satisfying experience in the intermediary sections of game activities.

……..

……..

That last potion might seem tangential; but it explains their attempts to fix these issues, and why they never work the way they claim it should. The designers focus very heavily on the End game part of a game system, but never put enough attention into the portions that lead the player up to it…. and its this part that they end up dumping all their gating systems, once they realize the system they designed is full stop at that one end point.

Which brings us to attempt 1 to fix the economy and promote crafting…. Ascended Gear. The recipes for this were obvious attempts to drain the TP of all the mid tier mats that were piling up since release. In fact….. there was never supposed to be anything beyond Exotic level equipment. But due to the bottleneck of T6 Fine mats, most players opted to get their gear from Dungeon tokens, and avoiding crafting in general. T6 Basic mats were still kind of rare, and still had practical uses… but consumption rate was low enough for a TP supply to have somewhat normal trade.

However….. Leather and Cloth was always an oddity in this system. With the primary source being Salvage, both mats were shackled to the drop rates of said items. With half the drop tables for gear salvaging into metal, both cloth and leather had a below average production rate. The current leather prices are an inversion of, and created by the exact same circumstances, that lead to huge increases in cloth prices when Asc armor was introduced. The underlying problem is the input rate being bound to low drop rates, and that the recipe demand being specifically skewed toward needing a disproportionately large amount of one type.
Cloth prices were a 3 fold problem…. 1. ALL armor recipes required cloth lining, and all insignias required as much, or more material then the actual armor pieces themselves. 2. Eles have been in the top 3 of every meta since the game launched, and Mesmers have been somewhat popular due to their unique skills. 3. The vast majority of cloth only comes from Salvage.
The reason Guardians never faced this issue is the general abundance of metal sources, and the lower amounts needed to craft equipment (2 ore to an ingot, compared to 3 scraps for cloth/leather). Kitting them was cheap.

Leather had the exact opposite situation at the time. The salvage rates were equal to cloth, but leather had other minor sources (bags, drops). But it was only used in Med armor, and all 3 Adventurer classes were unpopular in a lot of end game metas. With nothing demanding it, Anet tried several times to do one-off attempts to drain the supply…. but it wasn’t enough given how quickly it piled back up again.

Just to speed this along…… the introduction of Champ bags was basically their way of getting around the drop table/DR problem, by using it as a bonus roll that was guaranteed to drop something of value when killing a champ. It also had a higher rate of T6 mats, in order to provide enough supply and encourage people to start high end crafting projects. This directly lead to the surge of interest in Legendary weapons, as getting the neededT6 mats was now reasonably possible for most players.

Fast forward to last year. Leather is still in major surplus, but cloth is bottlenecking all of Asc armor crafting. So in order to do something to the leather supply…. they made 2 changes. 1. T5 Leather now takes 4 sections to refine. 2. Add leather to Insignia recipes, more then doubling the material cost for each one produced. But the biggest injury was Exotic Insignias, which are used in Asc and Exo armor crafting alike… from 5 Bolts of Gossamer to 4 bolts + 10 Hard leather squares. The mistake here…. Hard leather (T6) sections were not at the same surplus levels of T5 and below; because they were being used in other areas of crafting. Yet Ironically, Gossamer is in surplus right now, because Damask’s bottleneck was a high recipe demand for silk.

So whats Anet’s answer to this economic FUBAR? Alternate sources of Asc armor via tokens in other game modes, and bypassing crafting completely. Which they later doubled backed on to add a crafting requirement to a reward, from a game mode that doesn’t facilitate crafting in its design.

……

….

The term “ANET logic” is defined as “an action or decision that accomplishes a goal that either doesn’t fix the underlying issue, and/or overcompensates to create the exact same problem in another area of the game”. Their design process is plagued with blind spots that even players are quick to figure out; and many of their attempted remedies fail to understand an underlying problem… often making the situation worse in the long term. A series of small scale solutions being applied to a systemic issue, and inevitably exacerbates the underlying cause to cartoonish proportions.

AFK farming is NOT the actual problem….. its the fact that there is a glaring disparity between demand generation and source generation. And rather make adjustments to either, they opted to insert a Farm that was too difficult to use as a farm, not engaging enough to be worth doing in its own right, and were upset when players discovered a more effective, if lesser version of what they designed…… then killed it, rather then learning something critical about why the AFK farm developed in the first place. The leather farm was flawed on several levels, and directly violates a number of key design points within GW2’s philosophy….. it literally fights the game to get the players to do one specific thing, and the players are keenly aware of it. The groups don’t naturally coalesce because of how the gauntlet was designed, and actively expects players to do the opposite of what a gauntlet is designed to do- and the only way to work around that is have a Commander surrogate for a point of focus, that would normally be done by a map event. It lacks a clear goal to build and release tension that makes for an engaging event; leaving nothing for the players to be easily swept up in and have fun while doing the farm. Thats why the AFK farm went AFK….. the only interesting thing to happen is Imellhoof (aka AFK Check)- and hes on a 2 hour timer.

starlinvf.1358:

….

The term “ANET logic” is defined as “an action or decision that accomplishes a goal that either doesn’t fix the underlying issue, and/or overcompensates to create the exact same problem in another area of the game”. Their design process is plagued with blind spots that even players are quick to figure out; and many of their attempted remedies fail to understand an underlying problem… often making the situation worse in the long term. A series of small scale solutions being applied to a systemic issue, and inevitably exacerbates the underlying cause to cartoonish proportions.

AFK farming is NOT the actual problem….. its the fact that there is a glaring disparity between demand generation and source generation. And rather make adjustments to either, they opted to insert a Farm that was too difficult to use as a farm, not engaging enough to be worth doing in its own right, and were upset when players discovered a more effective, if lesser version of what they designed…… then killed it, rather then learning something critical about why the AFK farm developed in the first place. The leather farm was flawed on several levels, and directly violates a number of key design points within GW2’s philosophy….. it literally fights the game to get the players to do one specific thing, and the players are keenly aware of it. The groups don’t naturally coalesce because of how the gauntlet was designed, and actively expects players to do the opposite of what a gauntlet is designed to do- and the only way to work around that is have a Commander surrogate for a point of focus, that would normally be done by a map event. It lacks a clear goal to build and release tension that makes for an engaging event; leaving nothing for the players to be easily swept up in and have fun while doing the farm. Thats why the AFK farm went AFK….. the only interesting thing to happen is Imellhoof (aka AFK Check)- and hes on a 2 hour timer.

This sums it up pretty well, although I wouldn’t use the term AFK farming, because most of the engineers farming there were not “away from keyboard”.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Daddicus.6128:

What if they turned off auto-loot for any character which hasn’t moved or used a skill in the past X seconds?

This suggestion might be onto something. It could work fine even if auto-loot was activated only while moving, especially when there’s a keybind to AOE loot. So, if a player is present and not moving – just press another button to loot or move for auto loot.

Thanks.

I also think that even the automatic skill (usually skill 1) should count, because you have to fire it once per enemy to keep it going.

The risk I see is botting, but I think they’re getting pretty good at catching bots. No matter how sophisticated one makes ones bot-timing algorithm, it’s still going to report as a machine after a while.

So, I think this is a win-win situation for them.

Astralporing.1957:

There are three changes responsible for the disparity. Reverting (or balancing, in the case of patch formula) just one of them will not bring back the previous situation, but it may make the gap between those two types of mats become smaller.

Agreed. And, they don’t even have to revert it completely. Just change the requirements a little downward.

And, maybe, upward for cloth? Not sure about that. It depends on whether the overall game economy is actually suffering as a result of leather’s prices. I’m guessing there is a minor effect, but maybe it’s bigger?

starlinvf.1358:

….

The term “ANET logic” is defined as “an action or decision that accomplishes a goal that either doesn’t fix the underlying issue, and/or overcompensates to create the exact same problem in another area of the game”. Their design process is plagued with blind spots that even players are quick to figure out; and many of their attempted remedies fail to understand an underlying problem… often making the situation worse in the long term. A series of small scale solutions being applied to a systemic issue, and inevitably exacerbates the underlying cause to cartoonish proportions.

AFK farming is NOT the actual problem….. its the fact that there is a glaring disparity between demand generation and source generation. And rather make adjustments to either, they opted to insert a Farm that was too difficult to use as a farm, not engaging enough to be worth doing in its own right, and were upset when players discovered a more effective, if lesser version of what they designed…… then killed it, rather then learning something critical about why the AFK farm developed in the first place. The leather farm was flawed on several levels, and directly violates a number of key design points within GW2’s philosophy….. it literally fights the game to get the players to do one specific thing, and the players are keenly aware of it. The groups don’t naturally coalesce because of how the gauntlet was designed, and actively expects players to do the opposite of what a gauntlet is designed to do- and the only way to work around that is have a Commander surrogate for a point of focus, that would normally be done by a map event. It lacks a clear goal to build and release tension that makes for an engaging event; leaving nothing for the players to be easily swept up in and have fun while doing the farm. Thats why the AFK farm went AFK….. the only interesting thing to happen is Imellhoof (aka AFK Check)- and hes on a 2 hour timer.

Sounds more like blame shifting.

Ayrilana.1396:

Sounds more like blame shifting.

Then you’re not following the problem. Its not one event that created this… its a string of decsisions (by Anet) that cascaded into a whole series of problem, and Anet doesn’t respond to adjustments fast enough to avoid long term issues. I even pointed this out with the Leather inversion. They changed the recipe to eat up a surplus, but left it there until it eventually became a new bottle neck. The theory here is that common materials should be pretty close in price, because their consumption rates should be fairly level across similar recipes. Cloth wasn’t, because its demand was extremely high (ie representing 2/3rd of every Armor recipe), but production was incredibly low (only salvaged from ~20% of potential drops). Leather went into surplus because it was used mainly for one thing… leather armor. Metal remained level through this same process, despite being used in all weapons, and 1/3rd of the armor recipes, because its readily abundant between nodes, salvage, and has a better conversion rate of 2 ore to an ingot. They’re still a bit expensive at a little over 2s each; but those prices never swung as rapidly as the source restricted cloth/leather. Even wood is more expensive due to its conversion rate, but just as stable as metal due to their directly abundant sources.

The disparity is smaller in metal and wood, because those sources are not heavily restricted. Thats reflective of a working supply and demand system.

starlinvf.1358:

Ayrilana.1396:

Sounds more like blame shifting.

Then you’re not following the problem. Its not one event that created this… its a string of decsisions (by Anet) that cascaded into a whole series of problem, and Anet doesn’t respond to adjustments fast enough to avoid long term issues. I even pointed this out with the Leather inversion. They changed the recipe to eat up a surplus, but left it there until it eventually became a new bottle neck. The theory here is that common materials should be pretty close in price, because their consumption rates should be fairly level across similar recipes. Cloth wasn’t, because its demand was extremely high (ie representing 2/3rd of every Armor recipe), but production was incredibly low (only salvaged from ~20% of potential drops). Leather went into surplus because it was used mainly for one thing… leather armor. Metal remained level through this same process, despite being used in all weapons, and 1/3rd of the armor recipes, because its readily abundant between nodes, salvage, and has a better conversion rate of 2 ore to an ingot. They’re still a bit expensive at a little over 2s each; but those prices never swung as rapidly as the source restricted cloth/leather. Even wood is more expensive due to its conversion rate, but just as stable as metal due to their directly abundant sources.

The disparity is smaller in metal and wood, because those sources are not heavily restricted. Thats reflective of a working supply and demand system.

No, you’re still just shifting the blame. Actually, you’re shifting it to something that has nothing to do with the farm. If there was somewhere else that allows engineers to semi-AFK with the same return as Lake Doric had, they’d be farming there. It almost seems like you’re twisting around the thread’s topic in order to inject your arguments about leather.

Ayrilana.1396:

If there was somewhere else that allows engineers to semi-AFK with the same return as Lake Doric had, they’d be farming there.

Of course they would, but the only reason the farm existed and even had the returns it had was because of the leather problem.
There are plenty of places that can be semi-afk farmed right now, but nobody bothers with them because the returns are bad.

starlinvf.1358:

….

The term “ANET logic” is defined as “an action or decision that accomplishes a goal that either doesn’t fix the underlying issue, and/or overcompensates to create the exact same problem in another area of the game”. Their design process is plagued with blind spots that even players are quick to figure out; and many of their attempted remedies fail to understand an underlying problem… often making the situation worse in the long term. A series of small scale solutions being applied to a systemic issue, and inevitably exacerbates the underlying cause to cartoonish proportions.

AFK farming is NOT the actual problem….. its the fact that there is a glaring disparity between demand generation and source generation. And rather make adjustments to either, they opted to insert a Farm that was too difficult to use as a farm, not engaging enough to be worth doing in its own right, and were upset when players discovered a more effective, if lesser version of what they designed…… then killed it, rather then learning something critical about why the AFK farm developed in the first place. The leather farm was flawed on several levels, and directly violates a number of key design points within GW2’s philosophy….. it literally fights the game to get the players to do one specific thing, and the players are keenly aware of it. The groups don’t naturally coalesce because of how the gauntlet was designed, and actively expects players to do the opposite of what a gauntlet is designed to do- and the only way to work around that is have a Commander surrogate for a point of focus, that would normally be done by a map event. It lacks a clear goal to build and release tension that makes for an engaging event; leaving nothing for the players to be easily swept up in and have fun while doing the farm. Thats why the AFK farm went AFK….. the only interesting thing to happen is Imellhoof (aka AFK Check)- and hes on a 2 hour timer.

nailed it

Ayrilana.1396:

No, you’re still just shifting the blame. Actually, you’re shifting it to something that has nothing to do with the farm. If there was somewhere else that allows engineers to semi-AFK with the same return as Lake Doric had, they’d be farming there. It almost seems like you’re twisting around the thread’s topic in order to inject your arguments about leather.

Your criticisms make no sense. This thread is all about blame and leather. The OP is blaming the players for what happened to the farm. Starlinvf is providing an opposing view. That’s the basis of a discussion. You can argue for whichever side you want, but it’s bizarre to argue against the very mechanic of having a discussion. If there’s any injection of agenda going on here, it isn’t starlinvf doing it.

WoW, I can hear the sirens of the play police. I tend not to blame players for the way they play. I place a lot of the responsibility for successful play on game designers . The design should be engaging and rewarding, you know, fun. And, design should occur so that there are as many options as possible; play should never feel like there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

Ayrilana.1396:

If there was somewhere else that allows engineers to semi-AFK with the same return as Lake Doric had, they’d be farming there.

That’s true, but they are onesy-twosey. So, it’s easy to tell if they’re botting or not. In fact, I reported two today in Bitterfrost. Any toon that keeps shooting after all the enemies are dead is a possible bot. If they keep it up for more than a few seconds, and change keys, they’re definitely botting.

Jeffy The Bear.1560:

Ayrilana.1396:

If there was somewhere else that allows engineers to semi-AFK with the same return as Lake Doric had, they’d be farming there.

Of course they would, but the only reason the farm existed and even had the returns it had was because of the leather problem.
There are plenty of places that can be semi-afk farmed right now, but nobody bothers with them because the returns are bad.

Not true, Dust farming in Iron Marches is a lot better gph (dropped badly tho)

forum bug………………………….