So is GW2 just an AFK farm at this point? Why is every map you visit full of them now even the Halloween events?

[MyOwn Inferno.5918]

Seriously what happened to this game and its handle on AFK farming, why not just make it a skill or even a separate profession by now, hell Anet should give them an expansion.

Every map you go on they are everywhere, even mid day in the labyrinth when people can't themselves get on a full map with their group, like WTF, what kind of game experience is this for legit playing players?

I wouldn't buy this game where many of the main maps, especially POF are dead and full of farmers.

Even more sad, is its so bad I have to bring it to the forum only to see multiple other conversation threads about the same thing happening, the same bad experiences, but going nowhere.

 

 

[Linken.6345]

Well with the electrisity prices Im quite sure they are not gaining anything by doing it.

[Mount Mazama.2917]

5 hours ago, MyOwn Inferno.5918 said:

Seriously what happened to this game and its handle on AFK farming, why not just make it a skill or even a separate profession by now, hell Anet should give them an expansion.

Every map you go on they are everywhere, even mid day in the labyrinth when people can't themselves get on a full map with their group, like WTF, what kind of game experience is this for legit playing players?

I wouldn't buy this game where many of the main maps, especially POF are dead and full of farmers.

Even more sad, is its so bad I have to bring it to the forum only to see multiple other conversation threads about the same thing happening, the same bad experiences, but going nowhere.

 

 

I have not really noticed this but usually I am just going my thing or in a meta event. I kinda viewed the game as being pretty lively. I have not had many afkers in my halloween event groups. Maybe I am just not paying attention. I was under the impression it's against the rules to not actually be at your computer while you kill things. Honestly though I play this game for what I am doing not what others might be doing unless we are doing it together. I haven't really put much thought into it but I have seen a few odd necro minions or mechs killing stuff over and over. I wouldn't say I see this everywhere though.

[branwen.1049]

I haven't seen any AFKers in Lab yet (might just be missing them) but every time I pass through certain maps (looking at you, Iron Marches ghost farmers), I see necro/mech bots. It's extremely tiring, especially when they park themselves in areas that actively impede heart completion (a la Iron Marches).

[Daniyyel.3428]

Counted 29 in Kourna one day.  But who knows maybe everyone went to the bathroom or fixed supper at the same time.  Dislike afk farmers but if they are passive farming that appears to be within the boundaries of Anets policy.  I don't know,  I just know I wouldn't risk my account for a few gold per hour.

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by Daniyyel.3428

[Vilin.8056]

It's so rampant that people even made Youtube guides like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JImQyDPISc&ab_channel=IncredibleSushi

He sounds as He's on a Holy Crusade to destroy to *destroy* T6 prices to save humanity. 

Edited October 23, 2022 by Vilin.8056

[Labjax.2465]

I think "AFK" farmers (inattentive farmers in one spot with minions more like, not fully AFK necessarily) are healthier people than I am. They are getting what they want out of the game, contributing something (materials), and not being browbeat by marketing teams into treating it like a job you have to work hard at to be allowed cool things.

[zeyeti.8347]

If you want some fun destroying those , in Istan you can try take a bounty and sometimes it pops to the left mid of the map in the upper caves , the bounty can be lured on a spot where they are many afk farmers , then take your skyscale and grab popcorns .

their body stay there for  a while and i taunt them but no one ever respond 😭and port away after 5-10 minutes , so i can say : they know that what they are doing is not "very legit".

There is also the trick with turtle mount , but most of them have auto loot so it doesnt work often .

Another trick is to use the "bouquet of roses" novelties , you can , if the afk farmers use automated  attack skill 1 , make them fight in "costume brawl" , then use a costume brawl who has some grabs or pushes (like halloween axe or the choya pinata) and push them from the cliff. 

Edited October 23, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[kitkat.2745]

They're only common in certain maps. I see them mostly in Iron Marches, Domain of Istan and Domain of Kourna. I don't see them much elsewhere. They're an eyesore certainly but I don't think as prolific as you're making them out to be. I wish ANet would do something about them, but it's been made pretty clear they don't actually care about it

[Labjax.2465]

6 minutes ago, kitkat.2745 said:

They're only common in certain maps. I see them mostly in Iron Marches, Domain of Istan and Domain of Kourna. I don't see them much elsewhere. They're an eyesore certainly but I don't think as prolific as you're making them out to be. I wish ANet would do something about them, but it's been made pretty clear they don't actually care about it

I think it's more about not wanting to punish well-intentioned players with overactive measures. From what I understand, they will take action under certain circumstances, but if someone is just inattentive, they're not going to take action. Which makes a kind of sense. You don't want some random who stepped away in mid map to get a snack, who happens to have a minion out, getting punished the same as someone sitting there for hours farming the same spot. And on paper, it would be hard to justify differentiating the two. You start getting into things like, is it the length of time spent in one place that makes it wrong? Well what if someone is killing lots of mobs in the same place for a slayer achievement. Is it how long and frequently they're inattentive? Then we're judging someone who could just be busy in RL too. Especially if you start getting into automated tools and that would probably be the solution if they were going to crack down on this because of not wanting to expend the human hours discerning, such tools would surely be terrible at figuring out who is actually an offender.

So, I don't believe anet doesn't care about it. I think they are just taking a more sensibly permissive approach to it. If they took a more heavy-handed approach to it, we would probably have threads about how X person who was doing nothing wrong got a ban while they were getting up to take care of their kid. Things such as that.

[Eponet.4829]

13 hours ago, zeyeti.8347 said:

If you want some fun destroying those , in Istan you can try take a bounty and sometimes it pops to the left mid of the map in the upper caves , the bounty can be lured on a spot where they are many afk farmers , then take your skyscale and grab popcorns .

 

It's even easier in Sandswept Isles. One of the bounties in the south-east spawns just barely out of range of the mob. I ended up drafting them for help a couple of times while doing my Seasons of the Dragon bounties there.

Edited October 23, 2022 by Eponet.4829

[zeyeti.8347]

18 hours ago, Eponet.4829 said:

 

It's even easier in Sandswept Isles. One of the bounties in the south-east spawns just barely out of range of the mob. I ended up drafting them for help a couple of times while doing my Seasons of the Dragon bounties there.

Ty for the info. i'll note it in my daily roadmap. So you can use those afk farmers as pinata and complete the bounty , nice ! Can you just point out the POI or another point , so i know where they are "farming".

Edited October 24, 2022 by zeyeti.8347

[Danikat.8537]

I don't think I see many afk farmers. I suspect that's mainly because I don't like any type of repetitive farming myself so I rarely spend much (or any) time in farming spots and if I do I'll just be passing through and not hanging around long enough to see how long other players are there.

But even when I'm doing things like the ghost heart in Iron Marches which I've heard is one of the worst affected I'll see maybe 1-2 people who could be afk farming (although if they're genuinely afk then they're using scripts to move their characters around periodically) not the big groups I've heard other people talk about. I wonder if it's more common on the NA servers than EU.

[mythical.6315]

On 10/22/2022 at 12:00 PM, Linken.6345 said:

Well with the electrisity prices Im quite sure they are not gaining anything by doing it.

Like maybe a couple dollars a month at most.  People always bring up electricity cost as a con for AFK farming but it's very negligible.

[Shivan.9438]

Fixing AFK farming is easy.

Back in WoW, if you didn't do enough damage to a mob, you didn't get loot. Do the same thing here. If the player doesn't do a certain amount of damage to a mob, (we'll say 50%) they don't credit for the kill and they get no loot. This removes minions and pets from doing all of the work and the player reaping the rewards. It will force the player to actually do some kind of work. Auto attacking won't do anything, because the person will have to physically target the mob first to start attacking to let auto attack continue. 

[Labjax.2465]

24 minutes ago, Shivan.9438 said:

Fixing AFK farming is easy.

Back in WoW, if you didn't do enough damage to a mob, you didn't get loot. Do the same thing here. If the player doesn't do a certain amount of damage to a mob, (we'll say 50%) they don't credit for the kill and they get no loot. This removes minions and pets from doing all of the work and the player reaping the rewards. It will force the player to actually do some kind of work. Auto attacking won't do anything, because the person will have to physically target the mob first to start attacking to let auto attack continue. 

Uh, so you're saying make it hard for pet classes to get loot? 🤨

[Shivan.9438]

12 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Uh, so you're saying make it hard for pet classes to get loot? 🤨

1.) Pet damage should never be enough to kill a mob by itself. The whole point of playing a ranger is to use the bow. (aka play the game.)

2.) Just because a person has a pet doesn't mean they shouldn't have to take a hit. Unless a player is doing something that's not really supposed to be done (like solo'ing champs) it's okay to take a hit from normal mobs. In addition, if a player can't kill the mob from range, weapon swap to melee and finish it off. Don't hide behind the pet all the time. Otherwise, don't even bother playing the game.

3.) Pet's taunt, shoot the mob first then let the pet taunt and get aggro. This also means play the game.  

Edited October 30, 2022 by Shivan.9438

[Labjax.2465]

6 hours ago, Shivan.9438 said:

1.) Pet damage should never be enough to kill a mob by itself. The whole point of playing a ranger is to use the bow. (aka play the game.)

2.) Just because a person has a pet doesn't mean they shouldn't have to take a hit. Unless a player is doing something that's not really supposed to be done (like solo'ing champs) it's okay to take a hit from normal mobs. In addition, if a player can't kill the mob from range, weapon swap to melee and finish it off. Don't hide behind the pet all the time. Otherwise, don't even bother playing the game.

3.) Pet's taunt, shoot the mob first then let the pet taunt and get aggro. This also means play the game.  

But the way you described this solution sounds a lot like "pet attacks don't count toward credit" which means in practice making it harder for pet classes to get credit. I don't understand how you are distinguishing between that and something else in practice. AFAIK, the way credit works in this game is a damage threshold (maybe something to do with boons as well in some circumstances?).

[Andy.5981]

On 10/25/2022 at 10:06 AM, Danikat.8537 said:

I don't think I see many afk farmers. I suspect that's mainly because I don't like any type of repetitive farming myself so I rarely spend much (or any) time in farming spots and if I do I'll just be passing through and not hanging around long enough to see how long other players are there.

But even when I'm doing things like the ghost heart in Iron Marches which I've heard is one of the worst affected I'll see maybe 1-2 people who could be afk farming (although if they're genuinely afk then they're using scripts to move their characters around periodically) not the big groups I've heard other people talk about. I wonder if it's more common on the NA servers than EU.

There are usually two groups farming the branded just north of Lake Desolann in Iron Marches.

They are all Asura engineers, all the same level, dressed in the same clothes who are there for hours.

The other groups of Asura engineers can be spotted in Blazeridge Steppes, one group can be spotted north of the Lowland Burns waypoint amd farms Branded, whilst the other group can be found east of Ferrusatos Village in Splinter Hills and farms Drakes.

Another group can be found in Desert Highlands to the northwest of Derelict Delve waypoint, farming a fast spawning group of Minotaurs.

Theyre clearly a coordinated set of characters, probably all controlled from the same location.

 

 

20 hours ago, Shivan.9438 said:

Fixing AFK farming is easy.

Back in WoW, if you didn't do enough damage to a mob, you didn't get loot. Do the same thing here. If the player doesn't do a certain amount of damage to a mob, (we'll say 50%) they don't credit for the kill and they get no loot. This removes minions and pets from doing all of the work and the player reaping the rewards. It will force the player to actually do some kind of work. Auto attacking won't do anything, because the person will have to physically target the mob first to start attacking to let auto attack continue. 

There are two easier ways to fix this issue.

1) increase the spawn time/reduce the number of enemy spawning. One thing that all these spots have in common is that they have fast respawns with multiple enemies appearing in waves.

2) Add zone sweepers. One of the things that Anet doesnt seem to have is zone sweepers, i.e. enemies that have special abilities or cannot be killed. Players who are genuinely at their keyboard will have no issues with these enemies as they path through the area since they can simpy move and avoid them.

As an example perhaps add whirling brandstorms (bit like a small tornado) that path through the areas in Blazeridge Steppes where a lot of these players congregate. If it hits them, it teleports them to a random spot. If they're genuine players and at their keyboard they'll either move prior to this happening or if they are teleported, they will move back to the area.

There are lots of things Anet could do to split up these small concentrated groups of players without really impacting on genuine players.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Andy.5981

[Labjax.2465]

10 minutes ago, Andy.5981 said:

There are two easier ways to fix this issue.

1) increase the spawn time/reduce the number of enemy spawning. One thing that all these spots have in common is that they have fast respawns with multiple enemies appearing in waves.

2) Add zone sweepers. One of the things that Anet doesnt seem to have is zone sweepers, i.e. enemies that have special abilities or cannot be killed. Players who are genuinely at their keyboard will have no issues with these enemies as they path through the area since they can simpy move and avoid them.

As an example perhaps add whirling brandstorms (bit like a small tornado) that path through the areas in Blazeridge Steppes where a lot of these players congregate. If it hits them, it teleports them to a random spot. If they're genuine players and at their keyboard they'll either move prior to this happening or if they are teleported, they will move back to the area.

There are lots of things Anet could do to split up these small concentrated groups of players without really impacting on genuine players.

Not meaning to be dismissive, but these sound like things that could damage the experience for "genuine" players too. The sweepers as you describe them sound annoying (I already find the big tornado in Jahai Bluffs to be annoying, personally, even with the limited time I've spent there). And messing with spawn rates can mean it takes "genuine" players longer to complete content "genuinely." Thinking of the context of a particular heart, for example, in a core tyria zone.

[Shivan.9438]

4 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

But the way you described this solution sounds a lot like "pet attacks don't count toward credit" which means in practice making it harder for pet classes to get credit. I don't understand how you are distinguishing between that and something else in practice. AFAIK, the way credit works in this game is a damage threshold (maybe something to do with boons as well in some circumstances?).

If you're level 80 (necro or ranger) you can kill the mobs faster than they can get to you. If they manage to get to you, they can be finished off quickly. So it's not like you'll have rely completely on the pet to do everything. Rangers have the knockback on longbow and a leap back on the short bow. Necro's have fear on a staff as well as warhorn; just in case someone is worried about taking damage. The bulk of the damage done to a mob should have to come from the player, not the pet. This ensure that credit is given in a more accurate manner. I main a necro and ranger, so I know what it's like to have to manage pets. Key word being - manage. Manage meaning that someone is at the computer playing the game and not AFK farming. 

If a pet is able to one shot a mob, then it's up to Anet to adjust damage or synergies between player and pet, or adjust mob HP. (This would also be helpful in the older maps with players running elite specs from the other expansions. Power Creep. Uh oh, I said a bad thing there, lol.) The key to it all is to prevent pets from doing everything that allows the player to go AFK. The player should have to contribute to the kill to get loot, which is why I suggested about the damage threshold. 

Edit - Also in GW1, Anet introduced mobs that would stop a lot of the "you can't kill me" builds. One such of an instance was the 55 monk. Anet broke this build by putting mobs into groups that shattered or stripped enchantments and the player would get rightfully mowed down. The enchantments also had to be actively refreshed because they would expire after a few minutes. It stopped 55 monks from running into huge packs of mobs and just sitting there refreshing enchantments over and over and getting easy loot.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Shivan.9438

[Mell.4873]

On 10/23/2022 at 1:28 PM, Vilin.8056 said:

It's so rampant that people even made Youtube guides like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JImQyDPISc&ab_channel=IncredibleSushi

He sounds as He's on a Holy Crusade to destroy to *destroy* T6 prices to save humanity. 

Yeah he is a bad example since he does not AFK and their is nothing against camping a location with something like turrets.

The maps that people tend to AFK farm normally only have one instance so they are not very unpopular like Iron Marches so I'm willing to bet there might be 100 true AFK farmers and you are just seeing them all since there is just one instance.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Andy.5981]

9 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Not meaning to be dismissive, but these sound like things that could damage the experience for "genuine" players too. The sweepers as you describe them sound annoying (I already find the big tornado in Jahai Bluffs to be annoying, personally, even with the limited time I've spent there). And messing with spawn rates can mean it takes "genuine" players longer to complete content "genuinely." Thinking of the context of a particular heart, for example, in a core tyria zone.

You're not being dismissive but probably playing devils advocate, thats ok, that's what a forum is for, discussion.

There are more than enough single static spawns in the game and areas I mentioned for normal players to kill. These players are setting up in areas where there are very fast respawns of multiple npcs.

In any event think about it, you're saying that my idea would cause "geniune" player to take longer to complete content "genuinely" - well they cannot kill the enemies Im talking about because the  AFK macrobots have already killed them superfast.

In fact if you care to do a search on the forums, there are lots of posts about the AFK Macrobots killing the Ghosts at the wall in Iron Marches so fast that players cannot find enough to complete the heart there. Talk about harming "genuine" players experiences - well there it is.

As regards a zone or area sweeper, my idea was off the top of my head. I'm sure Anet could come up with something. That said I wasn't advocating something like the Tornado in Jahai or Dragons Stand, they're definately annoying. The sort of sized brandstorm I would propose would be about 500 units across and not drag people in. It would path and if you were static, port you to a random location in the zone, perhaps even just a Waypoint. It would definately break up the AFK farms. 

[Rongaron.9213]

afk farmers at halloween event? bring steve wonder to them ^^

Edited October 31, 2022 by Rongaron.9213

[Vilin.8056]

4 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Yeah he is a bad example since he does not AFK and their is nothing against camping a location with something like turrets.

The maps that people tend to AFK farm normally only have one instance so they are not very unpopular like Iron Marches so I'm willing to bet there might be 100 true AFK farmers and you are just seeing them all since there is just one instance.

Read his youtube title.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Vilin.8056