Guild Wars 2

Naminator.9316:

TSLlol.4879:

I haven’t gotten to play GW2 this week up until today. So I finally log on to farm me some karma in Orr. After one hour I notice I’m barely getting loot. I’m lucky if I get 1 white salvage item out of 10 undead killed.

So I ask… Why am I, a faithful player of the game being punished because of bots? Can I not play the game without being forced to leave what I’m doing every hour?

Ok so here are ANET choices.

Make farming a bit more inconvenient for a small minority like you and stop the bots from royally screwing over the economy, while looking for a better solution.

OR

Do nothing about it, let the bots ruin the economy, and thus ruining the game for EVERYONE! And in return, they don’t get to hear you whine on the forums?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Tough choice indeed.

Hmm, tough choice when bots have already circumvented the entire anti-farming code and are currently rolling in items and gold while the code is punishing legitimate players. Hmm, we should make crazy assumptions too, that sounds good.

TSLlol.4879:

Yata.8932:

I think the code is in place to discourage sitting in one area constantly, turning other areas into ghost towns eventually, yeah it’s annoying to some but it forces you do switch it up so at least there’s less monotony.

but I enjoy sitting in one place constantly and getting work done. It’s not like I’m gaining an advantage economically on anyone by doing so, so why punish me like that?

This 100%, but people can’t grasp that they shouldn’t have control over what someone does with their legitimate play time when they log on. So until then, the argument continues. I’ve yet to hear a decent counter-argument to why I shouldn’t be able to do what I want with my game time, including farming 1 zone, 1 area, whatever it shouldn’t matter if I’m sitting in my chair and controlling my character. The closest thing I’ve heard is to cause people to want to spend money on Gems in trade for currency, well I’ll say one thing to that – I’ll have a much greater chance to spend money on gems if I’m actually playing the video game in question.

Maybe to control the economy? There is already inflation on many items and bots have already circumvented the anti-bot measures currently in play so the only people being punished are legitimate players.

In before people tell you that your play style is wrong and you can’t farm because they don’t want you to.

ITT: People who don’t farm in games telling people who keyword- enjoy to farm that they can’t have it because they are the superior gaming type.

You guys are right, because you don’t enjoy farming, no one else should be able to either even if they find it fun. /rollseyes

Jia Shen.4217:

The thread is too long and full of line(s) of discussion or debate that is making my eyes glaze over hoping that the thread contains the info and constructive criticism for making the system better. Remember GW1 had to implement anti-bot systems to prevent complete economic collapse. But because it was added too late the damage was already done to the economy for it. So it only makes sense to me that if botters and some players have discovered some uber easy way to gain massive amounts of gold vs the vast majority of players that they would do that here as well in order to prevent complete economic collapse. After all it isn’t that they are anti-farming they are anti gaining coin much much faster than the average player causing economic problems or worse economic collapse.

Now to the question. What is the threshold for the anit-farm botting stuff to kick in? The reason I ask is I’ve farmed single mob types in a small area for an hour or two for fine mats (blood for example) and not had any anti-farm botting stuff kick in to reduce the drops to almost nothing. I can only assume that, at least in part, it is the rate at which the single type is killed. In GW1 it was in part repeatedly going into a single zone solo and repeatedly killing the same type. And breaking that up with “normal” game play would allow legitimate players to continue farming.

And now to the constructive criticism for making this better so that it doesn’t “accidentally” hurt the legitimate player over the bots and small portion of players effectively duplicating bot like activity without using a bot? Unfortunately using a captcha system is not the way to go because RMT gold seller companies have employees that man the PCs the bots run on to fool systems that attempt to identify the bot by using systems that check for the existence of the player. This also doesn’t prevent the small portion of players who effectively duplicate bot like activity for the similar reason of the bot farmers from doing the same.

Jia, thank you for a sensible post for once for someone who is skeptical. It’s conversation like this that I will bother to respond to because it’s not just utter crap being spewed like most people who just say “Deal with it”

The economy thing does make some sense, I understand a need for control over some players or bots to reach large percentages of currency over an average player. I believe that if the system is unchecked at all, it will make most (farmable) items dirt cheap and most (unfarmable) items skyrocket in price because of difficulty, rarity, and demand. They clearly do not want that to represent their economy though, I get it and it’s fine. The problem here is that the anti-bot coding is harming legitimate players much, much more than a bot is getting harmed because I can only play for 2-5 hours a day while a bot doesn’t care (or has circumvented the coding completely) and this is just plain unacceptable game mechanics.

On to the anti-farm coding threshold question – Exact mechanics are unknown, only speculation has been brought out from varying sources and people. Some people believe it’s zone-wide, some people believe it is mob type specific, I’ve seen reports of every flavor. I personally know that when I’m wearing 166% magic find, I get loot like MAD for about 10-15 minutes tops. Then suddenly – Grays…grays everywhere. It completely shuts down and makes me just want to log out for the day because it’s incredibly frustrating to only get 10-15 minutes of effective farming in. Am I going to go to a different zone? No. Why? Because the level 10 monsters drop level 10 loot minus a very, very low chance to drop a 70+ green/blue so no thanks on that whole system completely. I hope that gives some insight to your question.

As for the captcha thing, I now understand that it doesn’t work – that’s okay. I was just using it as an example for other measures that legitimate players could deal with without getting punished. I’m sure that there are other mechanics out there that combat/reduce bots somewhat.

That’s fine if they beat captchas. It could be one of many bot deterring mechanisms they place in the game. The main point here is that no matter how many anti-bot mechanics are in game, none of them should have a direct downside for legitimate players.

They won’t get rid of bots 100%, no game ever has. They can add a few systems in place to deter bots and maintain a decent economy without punishing people for playing the game how they want to.

Debsylvania.7396:

Um.. Eden? The code they installed is being changed again as it’s not doing what they intended. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Updates/page/16#post190414

I wasn’t referring to anything dungeon related, sorry if that wasn’t clear. I don’t mind the removal of speed clearing dungeons and making dungeons more difficult. I find that to be a positive change. Dungeons should be difficult and reward accordingly which is where they seem to be moving.

My post was 100% in regards to anti-bot coding in different zones – where if you receive X amount of loot in Y time, it puts you on a “No loot for you” timer for Z minutes. That system needs to go.

Hurray for more people trying to defend this system because they want everyone to be like just like them. You people defending the code have ridiculous and quite blasphemous arguments – most of them don’t even have bearing in reality. You claim to go do map explore, craft your exotics, or do explore dungeons? What about those (and soon to be many, many more) who have already 100% world complete, all their exotics, etc done? I absolutely love this game, I want to make a legendary and farm the cool looking exotics. You can’t tell me I can’t farm one area because it’s not how -you- would play, this isn’t a debate about how much opinion you get to have on what other legitimate players can do. Let me play how I want to play, and if I so choose to farm one area, so be it – add a captcha and I’ll happily type it in every 30 minutes. Once again, anti-bot mechanics should not have a negative effect on legitimate players…no matter what the mechanic is.

To naysayers – you just wait until you want some legendary weapon or awesome looking exotic and look at the materials when you get there, come back to me when you do get there and tell me the system is okay and we can chat from there.

Just from reading the first page, the amount of ignorance alone is overwhelming in this thread. You see things like, well I’m level 10 and I haven’t seen this problem so you shouldn’t have “powered” through to level 80 and enjoyed the game more or “you shouldn’t kill monsters fast because I don’t know how and it makes me angry you found a way to effectively farm items”

People are going to arrive at level 80 at different times, there is going to be some initial housekeeping items that a fresh 80 is going to want to do – sPVP, WvW, Exotic set, Some Explore Dungeons, 100% Map Complete, the list goes on. Well let me tell you, that when you are done with those initial tasks you will understand completely what the OP is talking about. I currently have 100% world completion, my full exotics and backups, and working my way towards my legendary and I’m by no means some ridiculous hardcore gamer that only plays GW2 all day. The OP is correct, and some of you low levels, or fresh 80’s who are reading this thread will soon realize – The DR system needs to go. It’s a poor way to get rid of bots, control the economy, and poor philosophy in general. When you start seeing some skins of cool looking exotics or legendaries that you may want to farm up for, you will go try to collect some items naturally and realize that you hit the cap in a matter of minutes and get crap loot for a long duration. I even wear 166% Magic Find so I hit the cap from farming within -minutes- of beginning to farm.

Fix this system now, remove it completely – Add a captcha every 30 minutes that pops up for farmers, I don’t care. I see more and more people complaining on a day to day basis because more people hitting 80, realizing these systems are in place, and getting very annoyed when they want to gather items of any kind.

Woah, did you even read my post? By no means does it state that I want botting to be allowed, I don’t even see where that would even hint at that?

You may not understand the mechanic that I’m talking about, so let me explain. Exact details are unknown, but people at level 80 are starting to figure out more and more details of the coding in place that prevents ‘farming’. What happens is that when you kill a certain type of monster, it can drop a certain threshold of loot before you get put on a timer that basically makes your character get really junky loots for X period of time. The time it takes for you to get put on that junk loot timer is ~20 to 30 minutes of killing similar types of mobs.

Now, the reason for this coding is to prevent bots from farming in 1 area with simple programming and them just attacking mobs that spawn around them. However, with every game comes bots and every game has different techniques to counteract botting – however from what I’ve seen, doesn’t have a direct impact on real characters playing the game. As a real player, I want to be able to farm and if I see a bot, I’d like to report them so a GM can investigate that player and determine if they should be banned or not. I don’t want coding in the game that just says, yep you can’t farm in a place for more than 20 minutes! I hope that clarifies things, I do not approve of botting.

As title states – As it is considered end-game to farm for a legendary, it requires such a ridiculous amount of materials that I don’t see why I should be punished if I want to stay in one area more than 20 minutes to 30 minutes. I’ve found a few really nice areas with high spawn rates and good variance of drops and it’s a lot of fun (for about 20-30 minutes) then I sit there for 30 minutes more and get mostly gray items? No thanks.

Anti-botting techniques should not have a direct negative effect on player gaming experience. There’s no reason that botters won’t figure out a way to configure them to move to point X for 20 minutes -> point Y for 20 minutes -> point Z for 20 minutes. If you think otherwise, you are wrong and haven’t seen the capabilities that bots can actually have.

Remove this game function as it’s causing me and I’m sure a lot of other people to become very irate with the concept that you need to farm for ‘end-game’ content but get punished for doing so.

Oh and in before – “Anet wants you to run around and do the DE’s and get a large variety of loot and to experience Orr!” and my response to that is that no, not everyone should have to play into one play style to not get punished by crazy in game (hidden) debuffs. GW2 should support all sorts of different strategies to getting loot effectively.