Afk farming, but actively...

[Dante.1508]

You know your game is busted when normal players consider afk farming as a legit option, to gain items and currency.

[LittleCrimson.7452]

I afk farm between doing chores around the house, and get the occasional whiner who runs up and demands that everyone in map reports me for botting. Which isn't the same thing as afk farming fyi. Not everyone has 6+ hours a day to be AT their keyboard actively farming gold. People will just stop playing if having anything in game is too much of a carpal tunnel-inducing grind. So which is better? A dwindling player base or a healthy population, some of whom engage in afk farming that is arguably harmless to the game's economy? It's also worth pointing out that farming the "honorable" way is still more efficient and going to net way more gold than someone who afk farms. So its not like its robbing anyone of anything. Report me all you want. Not likely that Anet will ban me seeing as how I buy gems pretty regularly every month and am overall a pretty active player.

[LittleCrimson.7452]

On 10/17/2023 at 12:35 PM, IndigoSundown.5419 said:

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.

Well I go afk usually before bed and allow my minions and an auto skill to make me a gold or two before the game auto logs me out. I also do this in between chores and occasionally come back to check on things or join in on events/WvW. Ive never been whispered by Anet staff in spite of the occasional player complaining about me in chat and reporting me so I think its safe to assume Anet is  just sick of so many reports about it on a daily basis and don't really investigate. The reality is that if I can earn gold while tending to the day to day irl, hell yeah I'm gonna do it. GW2 is not my job, it's a video game. It's for fun. And having gold to spend increases the fun aspects. So I really don't care about the "ethical argument" of it as long as its not harming the game's economy and all evidence points towards afk farmers having a rather minimal impact in that regard.

If Anet was genuinely concerned about it there is an easy solution: simply remove auto-use of all skills except for number 1 skill and put a timer on necro minions similar to the timer they eventually added to engi turrets. They disabled auto on a handful of class skills already, likely the ones that were deemed too over powered for auto-use. Truth is it simply does not negatively impact the game enough for Anet to care.

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, LittleCrimson.7452 said:

Truth is it simply does not negatively impact the game enough for Anet to care.

I don't know about it being "truth", but it certainly does seem that way.  For the most part, when I see players who appear to be AFK farming, it's a mild annoyance but it doesn't really affect my ability to play the game or complete content, at least not enough to make it an issue for me.  I do, however, report them, move on and let Anet sort them out.