Afk farming, but actively...

[Cernoch.8524]

4 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

You'll have to ask those who complain about it.  Me, I simply report them and move on and let Anet sort it out.  It doesn't really bother me and doesn't really prevent me from playing the game or completing content.  /shrug

Why do you report someone who is not doing anything bad as you say? They are not real afk farmers no?

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Cernoch.8524 said:

Why do you report someone who is not doing anything bad as you say? They are not real afk farmers no?

Are you intentionally being obtuse?   If I see players that, to me appear to be AFK farming, then I report them and move on.  I never said anything about whether or not another player id "doing anything bad" so don't put words in my mouth. 

The point is that no other player can know for sure if a player is AFK farming or not.  Anet's policy/stance is to report them and let Anet sort it out.  Complaining about them on the forums always gets the thread closed/locked with that exact point being made from the mods.

I'm not sure what's so hard to understand here or why you continue to be contrary on this.

[Cernoch.8524]

2 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

 Just because they're still there doesn't mean that they are doing something against the CoC.  We simply cannot know.

Thats what I meant by doing something bad. So I did not put any words into your mouth.

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

 Me, I simply report them and move on and let Anet sort it out. 

Basically what you are saying is that anet is solving this issue and banning people because when I said they dont, you said I am wrong.
So why you report players who doesnt do anything against CoC because Anet is taking care of those who do. Or maybe they are just doing the same thing as OP, which isnt afk farming. Logic...

[Doggie.3184]

AFK = Away From Keyboard = Not at Computer. If you're at the Computer and just being lazy then you're not AFK regardless of your doing. AFK = People leave their Computer to sleep/leave the house/etc for long periods of time while their Character remains in-game killing things, especially the extra naughty ones who use 3rd party tools like Aim-Bot Engineers who spend days blasting things nonstop and Necros doin full Greatsword rotations in one spot forever to avoid the inactivity timer. The inactivity timer now generally takes care of actual AFK farmers automatically unless they're cheating.

 

[IndigoSundown.5419]

19 hours ago, Steez.2840 said:

If my toon spent this time killing mobs while i point and click a hundred times in my inventory, for my part i would not consider it "AFK". But, is it ? can Anet check that ? what if i'm in a flock of real afk farmers, to use their spot ?

I believe that what ANet has said they will do if a player is potentially AFK farming is: attempt to contact the player in game (I believe, via whisper).  If the player does not respond within 5 minutes, then they are considered AFK and if their character is using skills, this would likely be considered a violation of the ToS/UA.

If your character is using skills on auto, or minions/turrets are killing mobs, but you are able to respond to a whisper (e.g., say you've got GW2 on one monitor and Netflix on another, so you are paying at least some attention to the game), this would be unlikely to be considered a violation.

The above is based on something stated by the former community manager on the old official forums.  I don't know if policy has changed since, but I've not seen anything to that effect.

[Rhailex.2513]

If you would get banned for that, then I would have been banned a hundred times for grabbing a cup of coffee and relying on my ranger's pet to defend me while I'm afk for 5 or so minutes. 

I have no doubt that anet is very careful about it because why would they ban someone who honestly just goes to take a kitten or grab a fresh cup of coffee but never actually afk farmed, ever?

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Cernoch.8524 said:

Thats what I meant by doing something bad. So I did not put any words into your mouth.

Basically what you are saying is that anet is solving this issue and banning people because when I said they dont, you said I am wrong.
So why you report players who doesnt do anything against CoC because Anet is taking care of those who do. Or maybe they are just doing the same thing as OP, which isnt afk farming. Logic...

I honestly can't tell if you're being real here.  This entire back and forth came about from your claim that Anet doesn't do anything to which I replied that you had no evidence to support that claim.  How this got all twisted up to where it is now is baffling.

Let's review.

7 hours ago, Cernoch.8524 said:

Pretty sure this "afk" farming is alright, lets be honest, anet does not ban real afk farmers either.

Again, you cannot know if Anet bans real afk farmers or not because they do not publicly announce it.  That's all I'm saying.  Your claim has no merit and it almost makes it sound like Anet doesn't take action, which is a bad look for the company.  It's almost libelous, really, for you to say as much as such statements have the potential to affect their sales.

GW2 has enough problems with publicity without anonymous posters on their official forum making unsubstantiated claims.

[Vilin.8056]

41 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

I honestly can't tell if you're being real here.  This entire back and forth came about from your claim that Anet doesn't do anything to which I replied that you had no evidence to support that claim.  How this got all twisted up to where it is now is baffling.

Let's review.

Again, you cannot know if Anet bans real afk farmers or not because they do not publicly announce it.  That's all I'm saying.  Your claim has no merit and it almost makes it sound like Anet doesn't take action, which is a bad look for the company.  It's almost libelous, really, for you to say as much as such statements have the potential to affect their sales.

GW2 has enough problems with publicity without anonymous posters on their official forum making unsubstantiated claims.

This video is over 2 years old, has anything changed in 2023, even at this very moment?

There is no unsubstantiated claim here, just you defending the acts while pretending it is something else, which is nothing new for the last 4 years of what you do in any relative topics in this forum.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Linken.6345]

40 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

This video is over 2 years old, has anything changed in 2023, even at this very moment?

There is no unsubstantiated claim here, just you defending the acts while pretending it is something else, which is nothing new for the last 4 years of what you do in any relative topics in this forum.

Yea if you got jade bot you can get the magic or might bags loot added to it.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Linken.6345

[Vilin.8056]

21 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Yea if you got jade bot you can get the magic or might bags loot added to it.

This has become an MMO that, once obtained the Gift of Battle, you can earn yourself a full legendary weapon simply by logging and not playing for a couple weeks.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Steez.2840]

8 hours ago, jokke.6239 said:

Just curious

How much you earn by doing this?

Difficult to say because i make the count in a daily, monthly and anual way.

Everyday i sell Mithril/wood/silk and leather, with that i can get back 70-80% of the investment.

Monthly, i sell all the rest wich are pretty valuable ! especially hardened leather, ectos, Ori, stuff for legendary runes and sigils... etc  and from that i can make 1K gold every month.

On top of that, i keep all of the exotic chance for the lunar new year bags and letters. This year i would estimate 6k gold if it started today.

If i could do that "afk farming but activily" (i tried 2h this afternoon), you could add up 50k karma, and 1.500k volatile magic (and 40 leather bags) per hour, without adding more time to the general farm . And both makes legendaries easier to do ^^

The down side is you get bored and burned by it. So nowadays i only farm when i want something ^^

Edited October 17, 2023 by Steez.2840

[Steez.2840]

25 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

This has become an MMO that, once obtained the Gift of Battle, you can earn yourself a full legendary weapon simply by logging and not playing for a couple weeks.

Well, not quite, i still have to farm a lot, wich is the point of this thread actually.

[Cernoch.8524]

2 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

I honestly can't tell if you're being real here.  This entire back and forth came about from your claim that Anet doesn't do anything to which I replied that you had no evidence to support that claim.  How this got all twisted up to where it is now is baffling.

If you read your 2 posts that I replied to, you will see that they cant be more contradictory, it simply does not make sense what you said. 

While you are right, that I dont have oficial information from anet that they banned this number of afk farmers, you dont have any information either, and I dont know if you play the game or not but all I see is INCREASING number of afk farmers, whether they really afk farm or actively afk farm, which does not matter and players like you will just report them anyway, which, if anet is banning people, will only lead to banning innocent players. 

So who is more right here? If numbers of afk farmers is going up then it is me who is more right.

Also, while I love this game and play it every day since release, why should I care if I say something bad against it, if its clearly broken? Whatever it is. Better than defending it at any cost like you do just now.

 

2 hours ago, Vilin.8056 said:

This video is over 2 years old, has anything changed in 2023, even at this very moment?

Yes many things, since this video was released until now, there is many more afk farmers.
Not to mention jade bots helping with afk farming.

Anyway, last response to this, I am sorry to OP for ruining your topic.

[Bollocks.4078]

I think there are a lot of different perceptions of what's happening and for every different perception there's a wide range of opinions.  I think the rules are purposely very vague.  The first bullet in the Unattended Gameplay policy says that "The use of auto-casting abilities to farm while not at your computer or not actively playing the game." is prohibited.  So that would mean if you have a necro with minions and a skill (like GS4) set to autocast, it's against the rules to farm if you're not actively playing the game.  This is something I see all over the place.  But the way that rule is worded implies that it would be completely fine if no skill is set to autocast.  That doesn't really make any sense at all.

People interpret everything the way they want.  I would say that if you are at your computer but you are not actively playing GW2 then technically, yes, you are not AFK but technically you are AFK from the game.

The truth is the whole thing is really a loophole that lets people get away with automating farming.  It's like using a radar detector to not get nabbed for speeding.

Nobody knows how quick you need to respond to a GM.  People used to say it was a pretty generous amount of time.  Anet will never say because then people would know exactly how often to check for a message from a GM.  It actually probably varies some depending on the particular GM and other factors.

[Jedrik.3109]

Ah, gw2. The game so engaging that no one can tell if players are afk or not. 

[Danikat.8537]

13 hours ago, Rhailex.2513 said:

If you would get banned for that, then I would have been banned a hundred times for grabbing a cup of coffee and relying on my ranger's pet to defend me while I'm afk for 5 or so minutes. 

I have no doubt that anet is very careful about it because why would they ban someone who honestly just goes to take a kitten or grab a fresh cup of coffee but never actually afk farmed, ever?

It takes longer than that. The time I got a whisper from Anet I'd stopped moving probably about 30-40 minutes before, although I don't know exactly. At first I genuinely did go AFK, I went to get a drink or something and then got drawn into a discussion in the kitchen, then when I was back on the computer I was looking something up online and had kind of forgotten I was still logged into the game. Apparently in the meantime an event had started up around me in what had been a nice quiet, empty area when I'd stopped, and because I was on my ranger my pet was killing things. I assume I got reported or someone from Anet just happened to notice I was there and I got a big yellow announcement 'whisper' asking me to reply.

Normally if I know I'm going to be doing something else for longer than a few minutes I'll log out to character select (even my ranger is not set up to survive passively so the most likely outcome from staying logged in is I'll die), but that time I forgot. Nothing came of it of course, I replied to the whisper, confirmed I knew the rules on AFK farming and carried on.

I assume one of the first things Anet do when investigating is look at their logs to see how long that character has been standing there.

[kharmin.7683]

14 hours ago, Cernoch.8524 said:

While you are right, that I dont have oficial information from anet that they banned this number of afk farmers, you dont have any information either,

 

 

This is precisely my point.  No one knows and for you to unequivocally state that Anet does nothing is a statement that you cannot support with any evidence.  So you shouldn't go around making such blanket, unfounded statements.

[Grouwdi.6279]

I feel like the actual real players in the game are something like 500 people while the rest of the thousands are bots or AFK farm people. Those Steam numbers are probably 3/4 bots/farmingPlayers

[Vilin.8056]

4 hours ago, Grouwdi.6279 said:

I feel like the actual real players in the game are something like 500 people while the rest of the thousands are bots or AFK farm people. Those Steam numbers are probably 3/4 bots/farmingPlayers

Which is why all NCSofts' current and upcoming MMOs are all featured with autoplay, just to accommodate what the community has become.

Might just a matter of time for this one, more booster sales and less moderation effort anyways.

Edited October 19, 2023 by Vilin.8056

[Vayne.8563]

On 10/17/2023 at 10:51 PM, Cernoch.8524 said:

Pretty sure this "afk" farming is alright, lets be honest, anet does not ban real afk farmers either. Only problem is that many players will probably report you because they think you are afk farming and ruining their economy lol.

Saying this isn't true. I know two different people who have been temporarilty banned for afk farming. Both stopped after that ban though.

[ShadowCatz.8437]

On 10/17/2023 at 5:43 PM, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Someone knows how long golden text stays on screen? Because if I go to wc for a few min and miss it, I get banned?

You might know that in most cases map instances close after some time (countdown when map population are low will usually have less then 1 hour before map will close with several warning in yellow text in chat and then you will be moved to new map instance, if you don't pick the option to move before (there is a small icon on lower right, same place where you can see chest to loot from larger events, which you can use to change map during that time before map will close).

And those time I have been away (AFK, but not farming or using pets (they will die if you don't manage them), minion (they aren't permanent and will have to be resummoned) or any other automatic skill that can kill mobs without any interaction from player).

If you really have to go AFK then avoid to place your character in an event spot or where there will be any kind of meta going on as it is really annoying to rez players that have gone AFK (while other donwstate or dead players that really are participating during that could have been rezzed and remember that some events also will scale with more players around which make AFK player that isn't participating event a problem for those actually are playing).

If you go to WC and you character isn't moving and you will get a message from ArenaNet, then is will also be the same text in your chat box when you return (as long there isn't too much chatter going on which might move it out of what is shown in chat window).

In my 8 years of playing I never seen any ArenaNet messages that ask if I am AFK or a bot, but then I have mostly only played with pets or minions that needs active management. Don't AFK farm either, so that could also explain why I haven't seen any GM from ArenaNet.

I do not encourage you to farm with pets/minion the way you are asking and if you would have read that section about: character should not perform actions, participate in content, or otherwise engage with the world while you are away from your computer.

From that quote it is clear that AFK farming isn't something that ArenaNet want players to do and is against their Policy. Going Idle or AFK is ok (as you will either die from damage, will have to change map when map population are low or if you don't use any input from keyboard or mouse for some duration you will get kicked out to character select screen), but not using pets/minion or any skill that will kill NPC that spawn when this happens for longer duration without active game play.

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360014185033

Quote

Note that this does not mean that you cannot be away from your computer (AFK) while you are online. Idling in a city or even in the open world is not prohibited, though your character should not perform actions, participate in content, or otherwise engage with the world while you are away from your computer.

Marked in Bold that section for participate in content and engage with the world as when you let minions or pets engage in world while you are not attending your character.

[koumo.6381]

Let me give you a case. I was in front of the computer. I used the Engineer to place turrets to kill monsters, and then jumped out of the window to play other games. Every once in a while, I would go back and re-place the turrets. Then my account was locked for 3 days. I did not open any illegal programs. For your reference.

[Linken.6345]

6 minutes ago, koumo.6381 said:

Let me give you a case. I was in front of the computer. I used the Engineer to place turrets to kill monsters, and then jumped out of the window to play other games. Every once in a while, I would go back and re-place the turrets. Then my account was locked for 3 days. I did not open any illegal programs. For your reference.

Yes you were not in the game and replied to the Anet whisper you got during the 5 minute break bettwen turret depoloyments or acted when they moved you from your spot.

So clearly afk and deserved said ban.

If you would have replyed to whisper you would not have got banned.

Edit

It is like other people said you cant be active in combat and not be in game if you need to move away go into spvp lobby for example.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Linken.6345

[Chase.8415]

Years ago I was following a bot train to farm things and someone messaged me asking if I was real and told me to stop following the bot train or I would be mistakenly banned. At the time, they didn't have their ArenaNet tag so I told them I wasn't botting, was just curious on what they were farming. They then proceeded to turn their tag on, which made me realize it was a game master... so I moved away from the bot train.

They then banned every single bot in the bot train. I don't know if they had some AOE ban spell or whatever, otherwise it didn't make much sense to me why they cared I was following a bot train or not.

[Holmindeboks.3490]

imo they may not ban you for afk farming, here is why. IF YOU play the game as intended and you do much effort without being rewarded for the time spend then i see a (good) reason for semi afk farming. i mean cmon, you work your 455 off and not getting rewarded, that is a HUGE imbalance to reward/effort ratio. but IF YOU semi afk farm and get the SAME reward (a few silver i think) as when you work your 455 off then it would be unfair to ban such players. they better fix the effort/reward balance. like wvw patience or something, you get better/faster rewards when active.