Guild Wars 2

So I’m off to do some leather farming when I see a “Engi Farm” in LFG. I roll over with my nec, and quickly see most of the kitten in the squad are engi’s, standing in one spot each with a few turrets. I know I know… first time I had seen this, though I don’t farm leather all the time.

So I brought my engi, set up a few turrets, munched on some omni food, and watched the slow but steady stream of loot pour in.

And then I remembered Anet’s policy that essentially forbids afk farming. I’ve NEVER afk farmed, and I know there is always a gray area on this type of thing, this engi leather farm seems, to me at least, approaching that area. I know one has to re-cast the turrets and clear out inventory every so often, but still the ratio of “doing nothing and getting loot” / “doing something” seems high.

Maybe I’m off the turret a little here, but I don’t think Anet had Engi Farming in mind when they designed this. Or I am just paranoid, and we’ll never have to worry about the nerf hammer? :-)

It’s not REALLY afk farming. Turrets die and need to be replaced every few minutes, so you can’t go afk for more than a few minutes at most before your loot just stops.

Its not even like the necro farm on bitterfrost where you dont even move in this one you move around and place the turrets. And frangly challenging farm =/= tedious farm and the normal way to do is tedious this is actually fun to watch lol

It doesn’t fit ANet’s definition of AFK farming, so you’re fine.

• You are moving around.
• You are using skills, not just an autoattack.
• You are (theoretically) available to respond to whispers.

To me, this doesn’t seem like anything particularly less challenging than Silverwastes event farms or the Halloween Labyrinth — you can’t solo those farms either, but in a zerg, there’s no need to pay a lot of attention.

tic tac toe!!! fancy seeing you on the forums lel, the engi farm is a grey area until anet responds, which they have not, dont listen to anything else…

the guidelines are too open to interpretation to fully make a decision in my case, besides you get double loot from the active farm.

I took the time and joined the Engineers with my Thief for maybe half an hour, leeching from their turrets storm. What I got were mostly heavy bags of loot, with 90% T5 leather in them. I really have enough of those…

Then I spent an hour old school leather farming up the hills with a zerg. That is a huge difference because you get much better stuff. And the Engineers down there were just as active, they run around and shoot at things, place turrets, lure ponies.

It was fine when I was eating my pizza, but the loot is not worth my time. I think I got about 25 gold from one hour hills farming, then another hour karka farming gave me 100 shells. Boss run gave me better loot than Engineer park, I made about 140 gold total on Sunday.

Basically: you cannot just afk in the Engineer farm, so there are much better ways to farm. I don’t consider it an exploit. These people are smart and organized and all, and I’m impressed yet again how game mechanics are used in a live game, but although Necromancer farming in Bitterfrost Frontier gives even less stuff than the engineers get, it’s more of an exploit because those people can actually leave the PC for a long time while looting (as long as people keep resurrecting them).

Faaris.8013:

These people are smart and organized and all

They’re really not that organized. I got curious about it one day while I was alt-tabbing between the game and random internet chat. I just showed up, placed some turrets, shot some moving things. Immelhoof showed up, barely made it out of the camp, then everyone was back to the lower farm.

Which maybe the level of organization is what appeals with the Engi farm. Readily available loot, semi-active/safe gameplay, and very low commitment. And every once in a while, a Crazed mob shows up and drops bloodstone hide, for a paltry 8% chance at decent salvage.

Not a great experience, but if I’m afk-bored on something else, I’d do it again for a while.

Saw this “Farm” today", at first I was like woah that looks like some industrial scale botting, then I realized it wasn’t, and quite frankly that was even more disturbing. I walked away feeling disgusted that something like that exists in the game, it seriously cheapens the game experience for me. Each to their own and all that but personally I think it’s a pitiful way to play.

Vavume.8065:

Saw this “Farm” today", at first I was like woah that looks like some industrial scale botting, then I realized it wasn’t, and quite frankly that was even more disturbing. I walked away feeling disgusted that something like that exists in the game, it seriously cheapens the game experience for me. Each to their own and all that but personally I think it’s a pitiful way to play.

Same feeling I got with the AB multiloot, SW chest farms, or even oldschool champ trains. Gather massive amounts of people and exploit the system to get ‘free’ loot. Seems there’ll always be a way to get easy effort free loot.

its not really an exploit its jsut too much man power

Jerus.4350:

Vavume.8065:

Saw this “Farm” today", at first I was like woah that looks like some industrial scale botting, then I realized it wasn’t, and quite frankly that was even more disturbing. I walked away feeling disgusted that something like that exists in the game, it seriously cheapens the game experience for me. Each to their own and all that but personally I think it’s a pitiful way to play.

Same feeling I got with the AB multiloot, SW chest farms, or even oldschool champ trains. Gather massive amounts of people and exploit the system to get ‘free’ loot. Seems there’ll always be a way to get easy effort free loot.

There’s a difference between map-swapping to allow unintended rewards being earned by people who did not participate in those maps, versus . . .

Grouping in a spot that is advertised as a group farm.

Turrets die easily and need to be replaced, so it does require a degree of active play. Not much, but still.

And hey, they’re helping to deflate leather a little bit! That’s a good thing!

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

And hey, they’re helping to deflate leather a little bit! That’s a good thing!

But does that really happen?

I believe a lot of people just refrain from crafting things that require expensive leather because they don’t really need them. They are nice, but not for the price. There are players who just buy exotic armor instead of crafting it. There are players who don’t go for ascended armor for the costs because exotic is just fine, or they do fractals/raids for ascended armor. I have guild mates who have several characters outfitted in ascended stuff without having ever crafted a piece.

Now, if more leather enters the market, the price only drops if the demand stays the same. I don’t think that’s the case. I believe there is much more potential demand, that is only held back by prices. If leather prices drop by 1%, you’ll have X more people who start converting it into items. It takes a long time to fill that “buffer” of demand that grew since leather became so expensive. Then, at some point, leather becomes cheap because the “buffer-demand” is gone > everybody who postponed crafting before, now finished their tasks. New demand enters the game every day with new players.

I don’t think that we will see a price drop in leather soon.

Jerus.4350:

Vavume.8065:

Saw this “Farm” today", at first I was like woah that looks like some industrial scale botting, then I realized it wasn’t, and quite frankly that was even more disturbing. I walked away feeling disgusted that something like that exists in the game, it seriously cheapens the game experience for me. Each to their own and all that but personally I think it’s a pitiful way to play.

Same feeling I got with the AB multiloot, SW chest farms, or even oldschool champ trains. Gather massive amounts of people and exploit the system to get ‘free’ loot. Seems there’ll always be a way to get easy effort free loot.

In the immortal words of Ian Malcolm, “life finds a way”