Weekly Changes, Why does the genuine player gets punished, but not AFK farmers?

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

I am baffled.

You lowered some champions to Elite so we can no longer easely get 10 champion kills, however, you added things that massively favor AFK farmers.

"kill 100 kryptis or bandits" and whatyaknow... Every location with high number of bandits is now litterly INFESTED with AFK farmers. I ran around Kessex and Queensdale and found on each area a minimum of 3 AFK farmers. 
Beggars Borrow and Bandithant Caverns in Queensdale
Jannaj's Bandits, Goff's Bandits, Kenna's bandits, Mudbay Digs (conveniently out of the way of possible champion) all in Kessex. 
This is ok? but fast 10 champions is not? 

Why ArenaNet, Why?

The worse part is, these are starter areas! What a good image to sell to new players.

I am extremely dissapointed. You could've seen this comming.

[Astralporing.1957]

They likely intended to push kryptis rift participation up. The previous iteration had "do a kryptis rift" pretty much the other day, and "do x rifts" weeklies were also common. They added bandits because they do seem to add a core variant to a lot of vault quests now, but i doubt they even though those will be a primary target for anyone. Esp. since doing 2-3 rifts is likely faster than afk farming 100 mobs.

And as for those areas being "infested", it's likely they were that way already before the weekly, noone just went there so noone noticed.

[Neferpitouh.4356]

Then don't do it. You only need to get 6 out 8 done.

Not to mention trying to farm bandits instead of kryptis, lol.

[Teknomancer.4895]

10 minutes ago, Neferpitouh.4356 said:

Not to mention trying to farm bandits instead of kryptis, lol.

Very likely due to their predictably fixed locations and high respawn rates in starter zones, both of which lend themselves to afk farmers.

Kryptis meet neither of those criteria, thus they cannot be afk'd.

[Kiki.9450]

You know what they say during Wintersday: "See it, report it!"

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

I often run around in starter zones to help people out. 
The above is what I noticed happening now that Bandits are an alternative.

Those areas were not full of farmers before, bandits are not farmed as other enemies that drop tier 3 through 6 mats.

I know doing Kryptis is much faster, I was not after the bandits myself, just noticed in a location and decided to check other locations I am aware of. This is since the change.

I reported some of them, but report all? No thanks, I rather play the game than spend tons of times on doing that.

I am mostly dissapointed at the changes, and the effect they had.

I cannot understand how ArenaNet think actively doing Champions in Lobby, or using the Training Area Golem is a BIGGER problem than AFK farmers now able to get weeklies done with zero effort.

Unacceptable. 

It's no fun playing with this many AFK farmers around.

And as to report? I remember a specific person standing in an AFK spot that I found... that same person now been there for over a week, no matter what time of day, what day I check, the farmer is there... Reporting is futile.

[Danikat.8537]

22 minutes ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

And as to report? I remember a specific person standing in an AFK spot that I found... that same person now been there for over a week, no matter what time of day, what day I check, the farmer is there... Reporting is futile.

If they've been there for over a week it's unlikely to be because of the Wizard's Vault, because this is the first week we've had the updated weeklies with alternatives. Also they'd only need to kill 100 bandits for that and even if they're staying in 1 spot killing the same 1 enemy when they respawn it wouldn't take that long. I'm not sure why else they'd be there, as far as I know bandits aren't a good farming target, but it also wouldn't make sense to do it that much for the WV.

'AFK' farming isn't new in GW2 and apparently it's not against the rules as long as you're not actually AFK and not using botting software to automate the process. Anet will check on farmers who are reported, but if they respond or react to the checks (some are messages, some are things like teleporting them to a new location to see if they react) to prove someone is at the computer then it's allowed.

[QueenKeriti.5176]

The only reason why someone would "bot" the bandits for a week is for the bags they drop, but, even then, there are more "efficient" and valuable AFK farms than that. It doesn't take a week to AFK for 100 bandits.

[Vilin.8056]

Here's a quicktip:

You can get quick 9 champion kills in dungeon AC story mode, all of which can be soloed by any lv80 character with moderate builds.

Which makes this weekly a quick effort.

Edited March 9 by Vilin.8056

[Padrion.7382]

49 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

You can get quick 9 champion kills in dungeon AC story mode, all of which can be soloed by any lv80 character with moderate builds.

Or you spawn them 4 at a time in the fractal lobby. They don't even fight back 😁

[Mell.4873]

3 hours ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

I often run around in starter zones to help people out. 
The above is what I noticed happening now that Bandits are an alternative.

Those areas were not full of farmers before, bandits are not farmed as other enemies that drop tier 3 through 6 mats.

I know doing Kryptis is much faster, I was not after the bandits myself, just noticed in a location and decided to check other locations I am aware of. This is since the change.

I reported some of them, but report all? No thanks, I rather play the game than spend tons of times on doing that.

I am mostly dissapointed at the changes, and the effect they had.

I cannot understand how ArenaNet think actively doing Champions in Lobby, or using the Training Area Golem is a BIGGER problem than AFK farmers now able to get weeklies done with zero effort.

Unacceptable. 

It's no fun playing with this many AFK farmers around.

And as to report? I remember a specific person standing in an AFK spot that I found... that same person now been there for over a week, no matter what time of day, what day I check, the farmer is there... Reporting is futile.

The problem you will find is they are not Afk so nothing will happen. I normally just talk to them and see what YouTube video they are watching. 

[Omega.6801]

1 minute ago, Mell.4873 said:

The problem you will find is they are not Afk so nothing will happen. I normally just talk to them and see what YouTube video they are watching. 

Basically this^^
Not saying it's good or pretty or fine or anything. But a short forum search will show you that it's just the state of things. ANet makes a difference between attentive and non-attentive gameplay where the first is ok and the latter is a banworthy offense, while both look the same when you just pass them by on a map. ANet's MO here is: they receive a report or observe a suspicious player, contact them and if they don't respond in time, the account is seen as unattentive and therefore suspended. If the player does respond in time, all is well and they are free to continue. At least that's the official version and I doubt we'll get more here or in any other thread on the matter. I can only assume that there probably are checks for bots and macros at work at some point, at least that's what I'd do, but I would also tell no one about it.
When it comes to this, we're all just stuck with either "Report and move on." or "Stop caring.". Taking it to the Forums doesn't change anything, we know ANets answer and what they are doing about it. Getting stressed out about, angry and aggravated is bad for your health and your enjoyment of the game. Trying to find these AFK'ers, grief them with mounts or by pulling champs into them is a waste of your time imho.
About the changes to the weekly, well it wasn't so much about punishing anyone as it was about removing something unintended and I very much expect them to come for the fractal training golems next. While changing the "Kill 100 [type]" category the way they did happened to make it more accessable and give people more choice. Same goes for the "Do [event]" ones. I think this is a good thing.

[Mell.4873]

4 minutes ago, Omega.6801 said:

Basically this^^
Not saying it's good or pretty or fine or anything. But a short forum search will show you that it's just the state of things. ANet makes a difference between attentive and non-attentive gameplay where the first is ok and the latter is a banworthy offense, while both look the same when you just pass them by on a map. ANet's MO here is: they receive a report or observe a suspicious player, contact them and if they don't respond in time, the account is seen as unattentive and therefore suspended. If the player does respond in time, all is well and they are free to continue. At least that's the official version and I doubt we'll get more here or in any other thread on the matter. I can only assume that there probably are checks for bots and macros at work at some point, at least that's what I'd do, but I would also tell no one about it.
When it comes to this, we're all just stuck with either "Report and move on." or "Stop caring.". Taking it to the Forums doesn't change anything, we know ANets answer and what they are doing about it. Getting stressed out about, angry and aggravated is bad for your health and your enjoyment of the game. Trying to find these AFK'ers, grief them with mounts or by pulling champs into them is a waste of your time imho.
About the changes to the weekly, well it wasn't so much about punishing anyone as it was about removing something unintended and I very much expect them to come for the fractal training golems next. While changing the "Kill 100 [type]" category the way they did happened to make it more accessable and give people more choice. Same goes for the "Do [event]" ones. I think this is a good thing.

You are right, most of the afk players are considerate and normally don't occupy anything that directly gatekeeps a heart. 

Honestly though I know the numbers of afk farming and it is not worth the effort even if you multi-box it. 

If you want to get the afk experience your best bet is to set up a good macro and participate in events or do hearts. Some events or hearts have a few way to achieve participation though killing so just do that to completion. I got my gift of exploration by parking my Ranger at hearts and just doing longbow spam.

That is much better money but I don't think that would count as afk, just being lazy maybe.....

[Omega.6801]

3 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

You are right, most of the afk players are considerate and normally don't occupy anything that directly gatekeeps a heart. 

Honestly though I know the numbers of afk farming and it is not worth the effort even if you multi-box it. 

If you want to get the afk experience your best bet is to set up a good macro and participate in events or do hearts. Some events or hearts have a few way to achieve participation though killing so just do that to completion. I got my gift of exploration by parking my Ranger at hearts and just doing longbow spam.

That is much better money but I don't think that would count as afk, just being lazy maybe.....

I only watched a few vids on the matter and know the discussions around it and from that I think I can tell that it's only "profitable" in the sense that it's next to no effort for a tiny bit of loot over a very long time. It is a process that can be minmaxed I guess, but nothing to where it would compete to anything, active gameplay would get you, even if you're just actively running around, doing map completion, killing random mobs or doing random events.
Also, since players aren't really competing for loot, as long as those AFK/semi-AFK players aren't interfering with events or hearts, active players aren't disadvantaged.
The bad look however, that unfortunately is a thing imho. It just looks weird, to say the least, when you log into a map and you find these clusters of necros/engis/rangers that all look the same, have the same name and behave like bots and you find them all over the map.
But again, nothing of this is new, it's all been discussed since years and so far, ANet has not changed their approach to the matter. I mean you can't install the Lake Doric killer mortars(tm) everywhere, right?

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

I cannot understand how ArenaNet think actively doing Champions in Lobby, or using the Training Area Golem is a BIGGER problem than AFK farmers now able to get weeklies done with zero effort.

I doubt they think that way. More likely, the Lobby/Training Area issue was just much easier to address than the semi-afking farmers (something they haven't managed to eradicate in years).

They added bandits (or other core mob types in the future, i guess) to those achieves in order to allow players with no access to expansions to do those. And they did it to help reduce the discrepancies between daily/weekly achieve sets between different players. Now there's a bigger pool of weekly achieves that players with different expansions can share - and it's a good thing. Yes, sure, some players afking those is not good, but personally i think that in this case the good outweights the bad. And so does removing some cheesy ways for doing Champions achievements.

(honestly, both of those are not hard to do, so just go out and do them instead of complaining that they've taken away your shortcut and using the "but they are also doing bad things" argument as if it ever managed to persuade anyone)

Edited March 10 by Astralporing.1957

[Manpag.6421]

I think the key difference here is that AFK farmers aren’t strictly doing anything unintended (minions/pets/turrets are meant to attack enemies on sight, and they’re killing the type of mob intended by the objective), whereas training dummies counting as champions was pretty obviously an oversight.

If the AFKers are truly AFK then that’s still against the rules, but there’s a difference between things not working as intended (ANet’s responsibility) and players potentially breaking the rules for the sake of doing a weekly more easily. I doubt AFKing it is actually any quicker than if you just ran round killing them anyway, but it is problematic if they’re essentially killing them too fast for low-level players to get credit for their weekly.

[Chichimec.9364]

33 minutes ago, Manpag.6421 said:

...I doubt AFKing it is actually any quicker than if you just ran round killing them anyway, but it is problematic if they’re essentially killing them too fast for low-level players to get credit for their weekly.

I was doing map completion on my five alt accounts this past week in Queensdale and killed a 100 bandits there and in Kessex Hills for each account. Personally, I never saw any afk farming on either map. What I did see were a lot of high level players like me hunting the bandits there. The only time it seemed really problematic was once when I was defending the water tower pipes from being blown up. One players was up in the air on their skyscale firebombing the groups of bandits as they appeared. That did make it tougher but not impossible to hit bandits. Other than that, there were a lot of folks running around after bandits but those bandidos kept popping up often enough that they didn't seem scarce at all.

Oh, and when I am on low level maps, I just spam 1 on whichever weapon I'm using. That still hits harder than any low level player but at least I'm not melting everything in sight.

[kiroho.4738]

20 hours ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

"kill 100 kryptis or bandits" and whatyaknow... Every location with high number of bandits is now litterly INFESTED with AFK farmers. I ran around Kessex and Queensdale and found on each area a minimum of 3 AFK farmers. 
Beggars Borrow and Bandithant Caverns in Queensdale
Jannaj's Bandits, Goff's Bandits, Kenna's bandits, Mudbay Digs (conveniently out of the way of possible champion) all in Kessex. 
This is ok? but fast 10 champions is not? 

1.) These "kill 100 xyz" objectives are not new. With the changes they just added a second option. "Kill A or B" instead of "Kill A".

2.) I personally killed these 100 bandits in about 5 minutes. It's not even worth to start afk farming for that.
If anybody is dumb enough to do that, fine. Let them waste hours for these 50 AA instead of farming anywhere else where they get proper loot.

When I did this weekly, I haven't even seen a single afk farmer.

 

1 hour ago, Manpag.6421 said:

I think the key difference here is that AFK farmers aren’t strictly doing anything unintended (minions/pets/turrets are meant to attack enemies on sight, and they’re killing the type of mob intended by the objective), whereas training dummies counting as champions was pretty obviously an oversight.

If the AFKers are truly AFK then that’s still against the rules, but there’s a difference between things not working as intended (ANet’s responsibility) and players potentially breaking the rules for the sake of doing a weekly more easily. I doubt AFKing it is actually any quicker than if you just ran round killing them anyway, but it is problematic if they’re essentially killing them too fast for low-level players to get credit for their weekly.

Well, afk farming itself is unintended so they will always do something unintended.

As for the rules, it's not about afk gameplay, but about unattended gameplay.
The rule forbids any kind of unattended gameplay. As soon as you don't pay attention to the game and your character (including pet, minion, turret etc.) is doing something, it's against the rules. This includes watching videos (or doing other stuff) on a second monitor. Even playing instruments via macros (macros are allowed for instruments) is not allowed without paying attention to your game.

[kharmin.7683]

Sorry, but I fail to understand the premise here.  How are genuine players being punished?

[kiroho.4738]

48 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Sorry, but I fail to understand the premise here.  How are genuine players being punished?

They are not.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

As the old adage says, "You encourage that which you tolerate". Anet has done this to themselves because they don't want to do anything about it, so it must be A-OK in their book.

The AFK Farming problem was solvable years ago. In case you've ever wandered away from your computer long enough and left GW2 running you know that if you stand there long enough you'll be warned that if you don't move or use a skill, you'll be kicked. There are already tools against idling. All we need is one more. A somewhat shorter timer in the background that counts down and if you don't move or use a skill in X time, you stop getting drops. NOW, that easily takes care of necro farmers, but what about turret farmers? They use scripts to constantly drop turrets, which would reset that timer. Fair point. Alternately, we could simply make a different timer that says after killing X number of the same enemy, reduce the drops. No normal player is going through and killing hundreds to thousands of the same thing. A hundred, tops, if you wanted to do your WV weekly all in one go (which I have done when I was desperate). So say after 100 bandits, you just stop getting drops. BAM! Instantly farming is done. Now this can be circumvented by simply logging a new character in or jumping to a new farming spot but now we're at the point where Anet has to actually DO something. They're like alcoholics. We can set everything up for them, we can make their enviroment the safest and healthiest we can, but if they refuse to stop drinking....well, sooner or later GW2 ends up in liver failure. And that's their choice.

Edit: All confused emojis are AFK farmers.

Edited March 10 by ShadowKatt.6740

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

Look, it's the result of the changes that baffle me.

Wherever there is a way to do things easely, people will go for it. 
The fact ArenaNet made the changes as they did, plays in the hands of those kind of people (afk or not) 
It does not look pretty. Specially not in Such low level areas. 

The champs in Dungeon is a nice tip, thanks for that.

 

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Sorry, but I fail to understand the premise here.  How are genuine players being punished?

Anet removed the ability to cheese the 10 champ weekly through the PvP arena and that is ""punishing"" players. It's kinda ironic hissing at the Bandit option being added while complaining a cheese is being removed, though.. one can just go to the Fractal lobby and spawn Champs there, it takes like 5 minutes to do the weekly that way.

[Gop.8713]

I just don't see what these two things have to do with each other. If you're saying that adding options to the existing wv objectives has created or encouraged some negative behavior then well okay, but as others have pointed out that seems unlikely. But even if true, what does that have to do with eliminating some of the many existing ways to cheese another, unrelated wv objective? It seems the more natural complaint from OP's perspective would have been to argue that more ways of cheesing the champ objective were not removed . . .

[Mell.4873]

12 hours ago, Chichimec.9364 said:

I was doing map completion on my five alt accounts this past week in Queensdale and killed a 100 bandits there and in Kessex Hills for each account. Personally, I never saw any afk farming on either map. What I did see were a lot of high level players like me hunting the bandits there. The only time it seemed really problematic was once when I was defending the water tower pipes from being blown up. One players was up in the air on their skyscale firebombing the groups of bandits as they appeared. That did make it tougher but not impossible to hit bandits. Other than that, there were a lot of folks running around after bandits but those bandidos kept popping up often enough that they didn't seem scarce at all.

Oh, and when I am on low level maps, I just spam 1 on whichever weapon I'm using. That still hits harder than any low level player but at least I'm not melting everything in sight.

Mount based combat and we will probably get more of it will probably be worse than the Afk issue. I could see a point where you mount around tagging events and never doing them. Something like the Bitterfrost Frontier would be perfect for this type of lazy way of playing.