Guild Wars 2

Hey There
I have been a long time player of MMO’s since DAOC, I’m not a great player, I am a 37 year old Mum and play merely for fun and enjoyment rather than being the best.

I endevour to always make sure my passwords are different and the maximun amount of characters you can use for every game, and I scan my PC regularly.

However due to being a Mummy of a very small child (3 years) with Autism, my playtime is often sporadic and when Jack demmands I pretty much have to drop what I am doing.

After reading the amounts of people “supposedly” being banned for going afk this makes me worried. As of now I am trying to log out to charcater select everytime Jack needs me, however sometimes I regret I just don’t have the time.

I do have a razer naga mouse with some assigned number keys, however I find that it’s more an ornament as I never use the keyboard I tend to move using arrow keys and mouse click the abilities. Yes archaic I know.

I am just worried I may get banned for standing still somewhere and not answering pm’s as I am legitimatley away from the PC on a Mommy errand. I repeat I am never fighting I would be merely stood. Even in the middle of an event, it just means I am probably going to die.

If anyone could put my mind at rest I would very much appreciate it!

Thanking you in advance

Sarah

I can assure you they don’t ban for just standing there. The things they are banning for is if it appears that the player is using macros for automated gameplay or exploiting in game mechanics to let the game play for them.

An example of in game mechanics would be a ranger that goes AFK where his pet can kill a single spawning mob over and over. I don’t think you can get credit on an event for just standing there and if you can that’s gotta be a bug.

Basically if when you stop hitting keys your character stops doing anything you should be fine.

Answering PMs was said to most definitely not be a bot checking method of the GMs so you don’t have to worry about that point.

In case you didn’t know, F12 is a shortcut bringing up the char select/logout menu. I don’t know if there is a way to append the Char Select click after that. Might save a few seconds. I know it’s not a answer to your original question but am hoping it might be of some use.

People arent getting banned just for going afk. What those players forget to tell you is that they are afk grinding, or botting.

Nimshae.2743:

Hey There
I have been a long time player of MMO’s since DAOC, I’m not a great player, I am a 37 year old Mum and play merely for fun and enjoyment rather than being the best.

I endevour to always make sure my passwords are different and the maximun amount of characters you can use for every game, and I scan my PC regularly.

However due to being a Mummy of a very small child (3 years) with Autism, my playtime is often sporadic and when Jack demmands I pretty much have to drop what I am doing.

After reading the amounts of people “supposedly” being banned for going afk this makes me worried. As of now I am trying to log out to charcater select everytime Jack needs me, however sometimes I regret I just don’t have the time.

I do have a razer naga mouse with some assigned number keys, however I find that it’s more an ornament as I never use the keyboard I tend to move using arrow keys and mouse click the abilities. Yes archaic I know.

I am just worried I may get banned for standing still somewhere and not answering pm’s as I am legitimatley away from the PC on a Mommy errand. I repeat I am never fighting I would be merely stood. Even in the middle of an event, it just means I am probably going to die.

If anyone could put my mind at rest I would very much appreciate it!

Thanking you in advance

Sarah

I wouldn’t worry about getting banned for going afk a while, I think the most they will do is kik you back to the log in screen if your character is idle for too long.
I know that happend to me once while exploring a map, suddenly got the munchies and went to get food…. parked my character in a safe spot…. went to make a snack… mum called on the phone.. got to answer mum when she calls ;p
Anyway when i got back to screen i had been kittend to log in screen, no big deal realy.

Drintar.1246:

An example of in game mechanics would be a ranger that goes AFK where his pet can kill a single spawning mob over and over.

Hey, rangers are players who need to AFK sometimes also. There’s not always a mob where I need to AFK but sometimes there’s a dead one there when I get back.

It’s not like a level 80 ranger needs the xp or the mob is going to loot itself. If a pet defending its AFK owner is an exploit then it’s got to be the worst one ever. I would think an exploit would provide some kind of benefit (other than surviving an AFK).

There’s no problem with AFK. I have been sometimes away from the computer while I left the game running. When I return, I see that I got kicked to the character selection screen and with a message that I was inactive for too long.

There would be an issue if you’d left your character with skills set to automatically spam an event area. That would be a ‘bot’ act which should warrant a ban.

or are not gaining undeserved rewards when not playing, you’re just fine.

I’ve noticed that sometimes I gain medals for events I didn’t touch when I’m just sitting inside a village crafting or selling. I think it happens quite frequently with escort quests that end at a village.

Thank you very much all of you for your replies, and for taking the time to put my mind at rest. It’s very much appreciated.

I will just make sure I put Necesseties the bear on passive as I found to my suprise in this game you gain experience just from your pet kills, unlike WOW where it demmands you as a charcater at least gets a hit in.

When he’s on guard he is a little rabid it seems grin

LeCreaux.3087:

Drintar.1246:

An example of in game mechanics would be a ranger that goes AFK where his pet can kill a single spawning mob over and over.

Hey, rangers are players who need to AFK sometimes also. There’s not always a mob where I need to AFK but sometimes there’s a dead one there when I get back.

It’s not like a level 80 ranger needs the xp or the mob is going to loot itself. If a pet defending its AFK owner is an exploit then it’s got to be the worst one ever. I would think an exploit would provide some kind of benefit (other than surviving an AFK).

I play a ranger :P However I try to make sure not to AFK where I know there’s a mob spawn close. Also you can always put your pet on passive if you know you’re going to be afk an extended period. AFK for 3 minutes and one dead mob I’m sure won’t get us banned. AFK for an hour with your pet killing a mob every 2 to 3 minutes and you’re risking it.

EDIT:as for worst exploit ever not really, sure at level 80 it’s unlikely you’d be exploiting but at lower levels other games have used pets to afk level overnight. Can’t remember which game it was but one game had basically a dungeon/cave where you could sit down at the entrance, tell the pet to attack, and go afk while it killed every mob in the cave because the pet healed faster than the mobs would dps it due to them being spread out so always a 1 on 1 fight.

Just to further put your mind at ease, my main character is also a Ranger. I have played that character for well over 150 hours and I am one of the worst serial AFKers you can imagine.

My pet is always on aggressive and will kill anything that tries to go near me. As a result I’ve gotten credit for a lot of events I never even saw the start nor finish of and many times returned to find some lootable corpses around me.

Obviously I don’t do it on purpose – it’s just that I’m easily distracted and multitask a lot, not to mention frequently walking away from my computer to make tea or lunch and just abandoning my character wherever she happens to be at the time. Sometimes that’s in the middle of a busy area with lots of other people and events spawning.

I haven’t been banned and I’m not worried that I will be. It would require some pretty high level of incompetence to ban me for botting, since 1 look at the logs would tell them my playing behaviour doesn’t remotely fit the pattern of a bot.

PS: As always when reading stuff on online forums it’s a good idea to maintain a high level of skepticism and not take everything at face value. If nothing else forums like these are usually filled to the brim with the bad stories and most of them are only told from a single perspective – that of the player. And sometimes that perspective isn’t entirely truthful because people like to exagerate or leave things out to make their position look more favourable. Without knowing the other side of the story, it always helps to take a grain of salt with everything you read. And yeah that includes my post as well.

I’m used to seeing the bots in WoW running routes mining every node, or the bots in Rift with nonsensical names doing the same. But what exactly does a GW2 bot gain by standing around swishing a sword? I don’t get it.

I do think that some players are a little to report-happy about claiming other players are bots. In WvW there’s constantly people saying on map chat to “report all the bots in the keep” or whatever. One day I was on a keep wall with another player fending off attacks and occasionally jumping down to fight and run back…when we both got accused of being bots in whispers because we weren’t running with the zerg. Same for the players using the trading post in the main keep. I think some players just want everyone else to obey them and use the bot accusation as their weapon of choice.

I’ve only seen one player who I thought was an obvious bot…some ranger that was teleporting to mobs in a hidden valley I stumbled onto. I wasn’t level 80 at the time and thought it was some skill that level 80s got.