Guild Wars 2

Hi there.

Me and a friend have been farming Vials of Potent Blood in order to use the mystic forge and create our exotic items.

We’ve been going for roughly an hour at a time, sometimes 2 hours, or until we get bored.

We both have over 70% bonus on magic find, but we seem to get our drop rates lowered after roughly 30-40 minutes of farming.

Both last night, and just now, we farmed for 1 hour. Within the first 30 minutes we received over 50 Vials of blood each… and in the second half an hour we recieved between 15-20 each.

However, it’s not just the blood drop rates that seem to be getting lowered, we were killing roughly 15 minotaurs a circuit and for atleast 45 minotaurs we were getting NO drops at all, compared to the first 30 minutes when we basically filled 3/4 of our bags.

We also moved on and killed some dredge, killed 20 of them and only 1 was lootable.

The question is, what the hell is going on with these drop rates? Are drops nerfed between certain times on the server, maybe to stop botting? Are zone drop rates nerfed? Are they nerfed for characters that have spent so long in a particular part of a zone?

I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed the lowered drop rates after X amount of time, and if so, what were you farming, where etc?

Thanks!

This sounds like a classic case of “working as intended” to me. I am pretty sure that this happens to prevent botting and gold farming. I could be wrong but I am almost certain that this is intentional.

Bel Geode.8129:

This sounds like a classic case of “working as intended” to me. I am pretty sure that this happens to prevent botting and gold farming. I could be wrong but I am almost certain that this is intentional.

If that is the case then I welcome this. So you can farm a bit but discourage botting and gold farming. I hope that is the way it works so that “normal” people with a full time job can also proceed in the game and not only players with 6-8 h daily logins. Good choice by ANet

Yea its working as intended they made same thing in Guild Wars 1, longer you farm same place, worse drop you get

it’d be funny if, after a few hours doing that, drops stopped entirely and you just started receiving grey items that sell for 1 cp called “A Life” with the subtitle “You need one”.

Thats nice to know. I’ve noticed this, but just figured is was a random bad luck type of thing. I’ll keep moving from area to area from now on as I harvest.

Raf

This game is not built for grinding or farming, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were programmed in a way where you get less and less. They don’t want you doing it.

At least GW2 doesn’t have that obnoxious little message once an hour. I’d rather that they throttle my loot than give me motherly reminders like in GW1.

“You have been playing for 12 hours. Please take a break.”

Yeah, GW1 did the same thing. Drake farming in Divinity Coast, if I recall, is where all that got started. Static chest locations with good loot and drakes for whatever reason dropped triple the gold of any other mob in the entire Krtyan area. It was also during a mission, so most of the area enemies were removed and when you were done resign→enter.

Nostalgia aside, it would be nice if there was some indication your drops were throttled so you don’t spend a chunk of time thinking its just bad luck and know you should just move on. When you killed too much stuff in a particular area in DDO your only drops would be “bag of rocks” that would sell for 1 copper.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Anti-farm_code

In my opinion, its awesome. It discourages botting and makes you go do something else for a while. GW2 is about SO much more than gear and items. Go find a vista, go watch some cut scenes, go res someone for Melandru’s sake… farming gets boring after a while Keep the economy clean…

I also support Anet slowing the item farming – both for reasons of anti-RMT _and fun.

When Legendary Weapons require 100’s of such items and farming is an absolute necessity (Providing you don’t want to fork out 100’s of gold) I don’t understand how they could throttle drops.

InternetKillTV.5798:

When Legendary Weapons require 100’s of such items and farming is an absolute necessity (Providing you don’t want to fork out 100’s of gold) I don’t understand how they could throttle drops.

Agreed. But if there has to be throttling, I’d like an official statement on what exactly the mechanism is……so that non-bots can work around it and not waste their time trying to get mats for crafting.

kyuven.4973:

it’d be funny if, after a few hours doing that, drops stopped entirely and you just started receiving grey items that sell for 1 cp called “A Life” with the subtitle “You need one”.

I lol’d

Well If they do nerf drop rates after being in a certain area for a certain amount of time. Do they stay nerfed for good or just a few hours or for a few days? Is there a know time limit to when you can go back and have drop rates be good for a time again?

In GW1 the drop rate did not decrease the longer you spent in an area, the “anti farm code” is not what people think it means.

If ArenaNet release details about how the mechanisms work you can bet money that the botters/bot makers would reprogram their bots within a few days to maximise efficiency. As it is, they’re kept guessing so market prices are a true reflection of supply and demand.

Xiphoideus.3149:

Bel Geode.8129:

This sounds like a classic case of “working as intended” to me. I am pretty sure that this happens to prevent botting and gold farming. I could be wrong but I am almost certain that this is intentional.

If that is the case then I welcome this. So you can farm a bit but discourage botting and gold farming. I hope that is the way it works so that “normal” people with a full time job can also proceed in the game and not only players with 6-8 h daily logins. Good choice by ANet

That is poor logic. Are you saying that someone who plays a game avidly should be penalized because they have a lot of free time? If I spend 6 hours playing a game while you spend 1 hour playing the game every day, why should I be on the same plane or level as you? That is not how a game should be built so I doubt that was the reason for the increasingly lowered drop rate. Also, a “full time job” doesn’t mean you can’t play for 6-8 hours per day. I know plenty of people ages 35 and up who are friends of mine with full time jobs who play this game for 6-10 hours per day. There are more then 40 hours in a week, what you do with the other time is up to you.

MuttinChops.1045:

Xiphoideus.3149:

Bel Geode.8129:

This sounds like a classic case of “working as intended” to me. I am pretty sure that this happens to prevent botting and gold farming. I could be wrong but I am almost certain that this is intentional.

If that is the case then I welcome this. So you can farm a bit but discourage botting and gold farming. I hope that is the way it works so that “normal” people with a full time job can also proceed in the game and not only players with 6-8 h daily logins. Good choice by ANet

That is poor logic. Are you saying that someone who plays a game avidly should be penalized because they have a lot of free time? If I spend 6 hours playing a game while you spend 1 hour playing the game every day, why should I be on the same plane or level as you? That is not how a game should be built so I doubt that was the reason for the increasingly lowered drop rate. Also, a “full time job” doesn’t mean you can’t play for 6-8 hours per day. I know plenty of people ages 35 and up who are friends of mine with full time jobs who play this game for 6-10 hours per day. There are more then 40 hours in a week, what you do with the other time is up to you.

Its about NOT playing the game to farm. You get some pretty good drops for the first 30 minutes or so, after that? Move on… play the actual game. Come back and farm some more later, or farm somewhere else. Play the game for the game, not the farming…

I wouldn’t be surprised that there’s some kind of farming throttle code that kicks in if you farm the same spot for too long. It was there in Guild Wars 1.

With that said, what I’ve been doing is going through different areas to farm instead of one concentrated patch of mobs. For instance, for Potent Blood, I would farm the Skelks south of Crucible of Eternity in Mount Maelstrom. Then I would hit up the Minotaurs and Griffons in Frostgorge Sound. If the drops start to diminish, then I would put on a Magic Find set of do some of the events around the 70+ zones in hopes for Rare drops so I can salvage them for Ectos.

Basically put, you just have to mix it up a bit.

ArtifexDominus.8675:

Its about NOT playing the game to farm. You get some pretty good drops for the first 30 minutes or so, after that? Move on… play the actual game. Come back and farm some more later, or farm somewhere else. Play the game for the game, not the farming…

You cannot tell people how to play the game. If someone wants to farm to level all their craft skills that should be up to them, and they should be free to do so. For those real non-bot people they should be made aware of what mechanism exists so that they do not waste their time.

I cant believe this, I am a guy who gets spurts of game play, so when i am on i go big on farming what i need. I really cant believe that this code exists, I feel it is not the way to go.

So after reading this post I am infuriated about how much time and effort i have put in just to know that It was wasted. Talk about limiting someone’s ability.. I thought we were free to do what we wanted. I waited 5 years for this game and have been having a blast but something like this makes me not want to bother with the game. Which i very well might stop playing because of it.

MuttinChops.1045:

That is poor logic. Are you saying that someone who plays a game avidly should be penalized because they have a lot of free time? If I spend 6 hours playing a game while you spend 1 hour playing the game every day, why should I be on the same plane or level as you? That is not how a game should be built so I doubt that was the reason for the increasingly lowered drop rate. Also, a “full time job” doesn’t mean you can’t play for 6-8 hours per day. I know plenty of people ages 35 and up who are friends of mine with full time jobs who play this game for 6-10 hours per day. There are more then 40 hours in a week, what you do with the other time is up to you.

Penalized? No, but discourage farming and botting. So it is not poor logic but one that you seem not to understand or like. And the ones with 6-10 hours and a job surely have no wife or children or any other life (or do not sleep). I think you did not get my point. And yes you will be further ahead nevertheless but with the daily kills progress etc. someone with less time on their hands can still make progress effectively. And the people who have 1-3 hours per day to spend are the majority of players.
If you don’t like this then I suggest you play Diablo 3 instead.
We should talk again once you have a full time job and a family, maybe then you understand that those 20 h spent farming for one item or so is not an option anymore. And the time spent should still give you the sense of progress and it does.

I believe the reduced drop system for farming has a lot to do with the dynamic events in the world. In order for these events to function, there needs to be a regular traffic of people through different areas.

In short, reducing drops for just standing about in one area helps to breathe life into all the dynamic events happening – one of the most fun aspects about this game.

So quit throwing insults around about having a life/not having one and for those of you used to the old-school method of mmo grinding – try something new! Get around and see different things. I highly doubt they will change this drop system as it does much more to help the game than hurt it.

“The Longer I Farm the Worse My Drops Get”

MMO mechanics 101
The more area gets farmed the lower the rate is going to be for some time.

Smackjack that is not actually correct, many mmos like to encourage long term farming/grinding in order to get people to stay in the game for performance rewards regardless if the actual process is fun or not.

My GF and I noticed this as well and it is disappointing. Companies need to figure out a way to fight gold farmers WITHOUT hurting their customers gameplay experience. Arenanet should probably rethink how long it takes until the “anti-farm” mechanism kicks in – when real money is involved (MF/XP boosts) and you can not utilize the item you purchased to the fullest – and no official statement from ArenaNet – you never know what actions buyers may take.

50% magic find cash shop items last an hour, so if you travel for 5-8 mins to a area, doing it 2 times would give you about 40 mins worth your money.

I too would like to know how this is supposely working. I dont think they will keep it in the dark. why? because it does hurt their customers and players.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/ArenaNet:Developer_updates/20070420

thats to the link for GW1 where they comfirmed that there was loot scaling and anit-farming code put in place.

@People saying it’s fine: No. It isn’t.

1) There are only very few farm spots for the level 80 materials. Most of the are in Cursed Shore.
2) Cursed Shore is the only level 80 zone. Further on a capable server, you only have mass monster-killing events in a single spot on a low reset timer. So by participating in Events, you’re automatically triggering the anti-loot measure. Doesn’t seem right to me.
3) Changing Areas doesn’t remove the drop nerf. I went with no loot from Orr to Frostgorge. Didn’t get any loots for the next 30 minutes.

A anti-drop mechanic doesn’t work with the dynamic Event design present in Orr. It’s as simple as that.

The mechanic might have worked in GW1, but it does not work with the (disappointing) dynamic events in the Orr-Zones (as the big chains are replaced by stupid and boring defend-your-waypoint events).

idk if this thread is dead or not but i also just noticed it….so does anyone know if this is area wide or map wide or what? i do not want to be spending REAL money on magic find boosts just to get no drops. and secondly what do some of you mean when you say explore and farm other areas? this does not work at endgame considering what you need only drops from 1 area and there are limited 80 maps……its not like a lv80 can just go to queensdale and start farming for Vials of powerful blood.

Its not just about stopping gold farmers and such, but also about the player economy. If everyone could farm at the same rate constantly, the total economy would go completely bottom up. This gives those higher level items a great deal more value. There is a possibility that the code may change in the future, but I highly doubt it. Accept things as they are and learn some of the additional farming locations for those particular items.

Another thing I have done when I notice drops slowing on a particular item, is go kill something else nearby that drops coveted items I don’t need and sell them, then I can buy what I do need. Early on I needed 90 vials of thin blood for an armor set I wanted to craft, I farmed about 50 vials from a mob of fast spawning bats and also got 50ish scales from the barracudas in the pond next to me. Sold the scales I didn’t need and bought the extra 40 vials. It was actually faster as I could make a loop, and had less down time between kills.

If a mechanic is added to the game for whatever reason…to quell inflation, combat botting, or whatever, that is part of the game. It is what it is. I don’t like bones in my fish but if I want to eat fish, I have to deal with the bones. I can’t wish that fish didn’t have bones. It is what it is.

Xiphoideus.3149:

MuttinChops.1045:

That is poor logic. Are you saying that someone who plays a game avidly should be penalized because they have a lot of free time? If I spend 6 hours playing a game while you spend 1 hour playing the game every day, why should I be on the same plane or level as you? That is not how a game should be built so I doubt that was the reason for the increasingly lowered drop rate. Also, a “full time job” doesn’t mean you can’t play for 6-8 hours per day. I know plenty of people ages 35 and up who are friends of mine with full time jobs who play this game for 6-10 hours per day. There are more then 40 hours in a week, what you do with the other time is up to you.

Penalized? No, but discourage farming and botting. So it is not poor logic but one that you seem not to understand or like. And the ones with 6-10 hours and a job surely have no wife or children or any other life (or do not sleep). I think you did not get my point. And yes you will be further ahead nevertheless but with the daily kills progress etc. someone with less time on their hands can still make progress effectively. And the people who have 1-3 hours per day to spend are the majority of players.
If you don’t like this then I suggest you play Diablo 3 instead.
We should talk again once you have a full time job and a family, maybe then you understand that those 20 h spent farming for one item or so is not an option anymore. And the time spent should still give you the sense of progress and it does.

Seriously…….

By this logic Anet should just limit every customer’s play time to say…. oh I dont know, 3 hours. After playing 3 hours during a 24hr period you get booted from the game and cant log back in for 24hrs. You know, just so that people with different priorities or personal situations have a level playing field and can compete with people that have more free time.

Just for the record, I dont believe that anyone here told someone else who bought guild wars 2, to go have kids, or take that higher paying job with more work hours, or to hit up the club or what ever else it is that people with your mentality do with your time. If your personal situation is such that your play time is so limited that you would feel justified that other player’s efforts should be hindered to create a level playing field for your sake…… you probably shouldn’t be playing an MMO or any game for that matter unless its single player with a save function. Pls go get bent.

Conclusion: I can understand Anet is attempting to get a handle on the Bots/exploits/RMT, however that should not come at the expense of legitimate players. Throttling loot drops is wrong…… just wrong. Effort should equal the reward, sadly this is not the case anymore due to throttling, and done so without notice or announcement of such mechanics.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Anti-farm_code is how it worked in GW1. I would be surprised if something like this wasn’t in GW2. It’s there for a good reason.

If you’re an actual person, take breaks between your farming sessions, farm some other components, explore the map some more.

InternetKillTV.5798:

When Legendary Weapons require 100’s of such items and farming is an absolute necessity (Providing you don’t want to fork out 100’s of gold) I don’t understand how they could throttle drops.

Yes, it does take 100s of them. And that should take a long time to get, not a few days worth of farming. That’s why there’s an anti-farming throttle.

Eleri Tezhme.3048:

InternetKillTV.5798:

When Legendary Weapons require 100’s of such items and farming is an absolute necessity (Providing you don’t want to fork out 100’s of gold) I don’t understand how they could throttle drops.

Yes, it does take 100s of them. And that should take a long time to get, not a few days worth of farming. That’s why there’s an anti-farming throttle.

No….no….no

Anti farming script was implemented to combat Bots/Afkers. Yes, legendaries should take a long time to get. No arguement from me on the effort that it takes to obtain a legendary.

However… that being said, stopping ALL loot drops for 30-60mins once the script kicks in, and follows you across maps/mob types, is complete BS. This does not just affect the loot you were farming for, it also affects the limited DEs in Cursed Shore, and prevents you from farming different drops/mobs. It effectively forces a player to either A ) tab out/stop playing or B ) stand pretty much idle, until the script drops off.

I regularly hit this script every 30-45mins, even using a variety of spots/mobs/events. So effectively nearly HALF of my play time I am shut down due to no fault of my own and left looking for something else to do. For the time being I have filled this down time with mining and jumping challenges. What will I do once I no longer need any more ore and have finished the puzzles? As a customer/player, having roughly half of my play time stolen from me by a script intended to prevent Bots/exploits/Afk farmers spamming 1, is a load of BS no matter how you attempt to justify it.

I understand where the mechanics flaws are coming from here. By doing events you automatically start hitting on the anti-farm code. This doesn’t make sense.

Mobs spawned by events and mobs spawned elsewhere should run on separate anti-farm codes. Even the same code, structure, timing, everything… just run them on two tracks instead of one.

This way, no one can farm regular mobs, and no one can farm event mobs. The coding does what it intends to do in each case, and if people want good drops they still have to change the scenery and do something else. Win / Win.

Otherwise, my only suggestion is this: go do something else. I enjoy bedroom activities myself. =P

50 vials of potent blood in HALF AN HOUR? WHERE are you farming?

1st of all – explain to me, how a person farming mobs for 1 hour has no life? O_o

2nd – there are only 3 ways to make money: gems, TP reselling and CRAFTING MATS farming. DEs give 2 silver, yay. Drops sell for 1 silver, awesome. I could live with that if I could farm those blue/green items non-stop. But I can’t. Anti-farm code.

Funniest thing – this so called ‘anti-farm code’ does NOTHING to prevent botting. BOTS DON’T CARE ABOUT IT. They just farm.

Would you like the same for nodes? 1st time you gathered a node a timer starts ticking. After 30 minutes you can’t gather anything. Like it?

Or chat. After 30 minutes of chatting you get auto-mute to ‘prevent spamming’.

If this is their way of stopping botting, they did a lousy job. It’s ANet’s fault this is possible but they should have done it in a way that doesn’t stop players that WANT to farm while playing.
It’s their way of playing. It’s their decision to do it. They will not help new players with tutorial as they see it as spoonfeeding, but they are very fast when it comes to punishing.
The more I play the more I get a feeling that ANet only sees one way of playing this entire game. And a lot of players seem to agree with that. Like we are all just a bunch of drones without our own personal likes and dislikes.

If indeed it is working as intended and it works as speculated

1: you just need to stretch your virtual legs and switch to a different mob/mat ie not sit in one area while other areas languish this is good

2: botting in one area ie: the simplest form of botting, is less effective

And my final point

3: it only punishes LAZY people who want to farm mindlessly instead of encouraging free trade between mates, if YOU can’t farm the mat because it’s being throttled, get a friend who’s farming something else to swap with you… MANY of the complaints I see in this game are from the SPMMO mentality which has migrated from other mmo games, the last thing in the world they’d want to do is adapt for soloing by getting more survivability, or ya know, ask another player to help them…. god forbid it…

Oh and whilst I can understand the discontent, no one really said that grinding was farming :S I believe that’s the problem in terms of labels here

Why is this such an issue? Go find mobs that haven’t been killed in a while, (you will see a good amount of bonus exp frm them) then, keep moving, explore the nooks and crannies, go where there aren’t gobs of people, clean the area then move on. I repeat, why is this even an issue?

I suspect that drop rate decrease is based on mob type. Yesterday I was doing Straits of Devastation, normal gameplay (DE, skillpoints, poi…, all areas of map) – drops stopped after about 40 minutes, no matter what part of map I was.

ALL mobs on that map are Risen (no matter if its drake, asura, chiken – its RISEN and it don’t count to your daily kill variety).

In every other zone before I didn’t notice any problems with drops – you go to different heart, you get different mobs, in Orr there are only RISEN and you get decreased drops after short time no matter where you go.

They should make it area based not mob type based – that would help normal endgame gameplay and still limit farming.

PS. To finish my daily kill variety I had to visit different map – all RISEN count as 1 kill type.

The ice elementals and sparks in that map don’t count either, Terkis. I was very sad.

Wow didn’t know about this till now, I can’t believe this is even real, you think the bots care? they are not even humans, they will just stay there forever.

This hurts players and nobody else.

Remove this garbage script. You don’t get to say how long I farm, I do.

So there’s a lot of mixed answers in this thread. Is the script enforced against mob types or all mobs in general?

anti-farm code??? what kind of rubbish is this?

i am trying to get my crafting up, i require certain mats for the crafting. after all that is how the game is made and if u want to lvl your crafting you need those mats.

i prefer to get my farming of those mats over and donewith as fast as possible ‘so that i can, MOVE ONTO THE NEXT AREA’.

however this is not possible with this stupid intervention.

now all i have to look forward to is mindless farming, which takes forever neway with the auto-balancing and having to take so long just to kill mobs that i should be 1-shotting, that i am getting very bored with this game.

as far as i’m concerned, GET RID OF IT.

there are other ways of dealing with botters and gold farmers

I’m pretty sure its mob types – last thing I did yesterday in that zone was going back to Fort Trinity and do escort doylak event – there were 3 waves of different mobs on the way:

- normal moa
- risen drakes (was killing all types of risen all time across the map)
- normal fireflyes

From normal mobs I got 5 or 6 armor drops (white/blue) and some grey items, from risen drakes – 1 grey item. Rng wasn’t in favour for drakes, but still the difference in drops was huge.

Guys, don’t buy the 50% Magic farm gem store boost.

The best is to get 6 runes to raise your MF to 60% passive. (you can still eath omnomberry bars on top of this to bring it to 100%).

You can do so be getting 5 Superior Runes of the Pirate and 1 Superior Rune of the Traveler (or vice versa).

However the Pirate runes are currently worth 50% of the Traveler runes so 5 Pirates is a much better idea.

regardless if anti-farm code is in game or not it does not stop you from farming anything period,it reduces drop rate
fyi there is more than one lvl80 area to farm
magic find is NOT required for any drops to make anything
their are ways to farm very successfully even if anti-farm codes are in place,but you wont find that info posted here