Janthir Lowlands Arena AFK leeching

[Chyro.1462]

Heya.

Haven't been back in JW for a while since release cause doing other stuff, and it wasn't that bad back then. But now visiting the bear training arena, it's quite offputting how many afk leechers you can see crowding the border of the arena. A lot of heralds, either pulsing boons on the side or having the ventari tablet pulse around in the middle of the arena and maybe a few mechanists pulsing boons from their mech. And running in a corner to avoid being afk d/c'ed (I assume those that aren't in the running animation are using some 3rd party tool that hits a button for them every few seconds to avoid being detected as afk). Considering arenanet implemented the 5min d/c timer when afk in combat, this seems to go against the intents of arenanet as it circumvents the measure they took against this.

It's one thing if they're in some old forgotten map in a far off corner. Another if it's right at the start of a new expansion map where it can also affect many new (if they boost and directly go for it) and returning player's first impression of the new expansion. Also it makes the champion/legendary bosses much tankier due to the upscaling of so many inactive players around, so if you only have a handful of active players fighting it takes forever to take them down. For Barbed Vale, the legendary, it may even mean running out of time to complete the event due to the upscaling.

Can arenanet do something about those afk players?

https://imgur.com/iTbXkrC

[Gop.8713]

I've seen posts complaining about this and blew them off bc there are always posts complaining about this sort of thing, it's really difficult to police ppls who are heavily invested in trying to job the system and bc they're not technically doing anything wrong . . .

But then I happened by the arena in question one day and holy poop OP has got a point. This really is egregious and probs deserves some kind of attn . . .

Edited Monday at 10:42 AM by Gop.8713

[Dean Calaway.9718]

Active players should just walk away and let the AFKers AFK, give them nothing to leech from, that'll work better than waiting for Anet to something they might never do.

[Gop.8713]

The problem with that solution is that there isn't anywhere else to do that particular thing, tho I agree that a solution from anet is not likely to come soon . . .

Sometimes they'll surprise you tho, and they can get pretty creative about finding solutions . . .

[Pifil.5193]

Well, they can't be fully afk otherwise they'd be kicked by the 5 minute timer that ArenaNet put in place so they're there just not that useful.

I doubt there's much they can do about it or at least I don't think they'd care enough right now.

[Chyro.1462]

One solution I could think of though not sure if its technically possible: If they make it so that you're required to be inside the arena during the event to get any contribution at all. So that boons/healing from outside can't get contribution. If they were forced to be inside the arena, most of the bear bosses would likely kill them and make it a waste of time if their char then just lies dead on the floor. ...though there's some holes in this solution. With those ventari tablets, when enough of the afkers are stacked, they may just heal through any damage hits from the bosses (think that's unlikely though, cause there's players going down even in the middle of those tablets when hit by multiple boss aoes). If afking inside the arena without actively dodging is likely to get them killed, it likely wouldn't be worth the trouble anymore.

[Manpag.6421]

11 minutes ago, Chyro.1462 said:

With those ventari tablets, when enough of the afkers are stacked, they may just heal through any damage hits from the bosses (think that's unlikely though, cause there's players going down even in the middle of those tablets when hit by multiple boss aoes)

Yeah, no-one's healing through Barbed Vale if they stand still. If they get grabbed and his defiance bar isn't broken, that seems to be an insta-kill — does over 3 million damage or something iirc?

But just to add: people boon/heal leeching in these events are doing worse than just leeching and upscaling the events (which are tied to a mastery point, so a lot of players want them); they're actually buffing/healing the boss too, because they're friendly to them, so actively making it harder for those taking part.

[Alester.7063]

The 5 min d/c is not active for these players. The arena opponents are only enemies once you enter the arena, before that they are friendly entities. Meaning, so long as the afk-peeps stay outside of the arena they will not trigger combat, hence no 5 min timer. 

The Ventari skill can be put auto-cast by using it as the 'auto-attack' (ctrl+right-mb, if I remember correctly), meaning there is no need for external tools. Unfortunatelly they will still get event participation, since they gave boons to players that participated actively in the event. 

 

While I have not tested it I think they do not contribute to event scaling at least.

Unfortunatelly I think this might be quite hard to fix without negatively impacting other areas of the game.

[kharmin.7683]

For the record, I don't AFK leech and I do not condone such.  Having said that, in this instance if they don't scale the event, then I have to wonder what is the complaint.  If these players are not hampering other players from completing the content, then why does it matter?

[Noidea Incognito.9607]

Hm... they don't need to overhaul existing profession systems to stop this "Honey farm"....

It seems these players are outside of the combat arena to avoid getting targeted by the mobs. If the dev's assign the zones around the arena to automatically disable player skill/utilities by default they would be forced to enter the combat zone. even if they tried todo the same thing; the chances are high they would get hit hard by Boss aoe fields/attacks.

Edited Tuesday at 01:19 PM by Noidea Incognito.9607

[kiroho.4738]

On 9/23/2024 at 2:26 PM, Pifil.5193 said:

Well, they can't be fully afk otherwise they'd be kicked by the 5 minute timer that ArenaNet put in place so they're there just not that useful.

Ironically this timer stops when you die. So if you keep dying and ppl keep rezzing you, you can still afk leech as long as you want.

 

On 9/23/2024 at 1:11 PM, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Active players should just walk away and let the AFKers AFK, give them nothing to leech from, that'll work better than waiting for Anet to something they might never do.

Actually no, it would not.

In theory this idea might sound logic, but in practice people are not willing to stop playing the content they want or need just because there is someone afk/leeching.

Your solution literally means restricting the content you play or in other words letting afk/leeching players dictate what content you are allowed to play.

And I mean, when you look at it soberly, if players have to choose between playing the game and having leechers getting loot vs. not playing the game how they like and not getting loot themself, nobody will choose the latter option.

[Klein Meme.2460]

Half of the amount of players (or at least 5-6) afk leeching quite often. Yes... works as intended. (Sarcasm)
Do outside players count towards the scaling even? If so it is even worse for active players.

Solution? Make boons not getting into affect outside of the arena. They could easily pull that off, like you can't attack enemies outside as well.

That's just a sad thing to happen and that it is even accepted with arguments like: "Nothing you can do here." or "Who cares?"...
True, WE can't do anything. But Anet could.
Make the borders for safespots nonexistent by testing. Make the Arena Area totally isolated, as it counts for attacks but as well for boons that come from outside the area.
Done...

1/3 of the players are afk leechers... 

https://i.gyazo.com/b327165c89d3d35f75ef05e0b4de0032.jpg

Edited Tuesday at 06:10 PM by Klein Meme.2460

[Keye.1673]

Stress not, for when the process works!

https://imgur.com/a/Cn1kZry

[Sobx.1758]

And that's just one of the reasons the 5 minute afk timer was a good start, but still not good enough. Next step: maybe remove autorun and autocast counting as player input.

Although does this even put them in-combat when they're outside of the arena? If not, they need to fix the event to not give participation unless the player is within the arena and/or in-combat.

Edited Tuesday at 09:47 PM by Sobx.1758

[Manpag.6421]

1 hour ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Although does this even put them in-combat when they're outside of the arena? If not, they need to fix the event to not give participation unless the player is within the arena and/or in-combat.

Technically, I think the sweeping fix (that I'm sure people wouldn't like) is to make it so that if you give someone a boon/heal and they get put into combat, you get put into combat. That way, it wouldn't matter whether the arena enemies were hostile to you or not, your boon recipient would be in combat so you would be too. The vast majority of the time, if you're doing one or both of those things, you are in combat anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge issue.

[Sobx.1758]

18 hours ago, Manpag.6421 said:

Technically, I think the sweeping fix (that I'm sure people wouldn't like) is to make it so that if you give someone a boon/heal and they get put into combat, you get put into combat. That way, it wouldn't matter whether the arena enemies were hostile to you or not, your boon recipient would be in combat so you would be too. The vast majority of the time, if you're doing one or both of those things, you are in combat anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge issue.

That's not a bad idea, at least until someone is able to point out otherwise. Still there would need to be a change implemented where autorun doesn't count as user input against that 5 minute afk timer. Otherwise just putting them in-combat wouldn't change much.

Edited yesterday at 05:59 PM by Sobx.1758

[Manpag.6421]

36 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Still there would need to be a change implemented where autorun doesn't count as user input against that 5 minute afk timer. Otherwise just putting them in-combat wouldn't change much.

It's mad that that still isn't fixed, and yet mount skills and movement don't always count as skills/movement for the AFK timer, I know some people were struggling with getting kicked while doing beetle courses because they weren't using WASD. Absolute madness that someone autorunning in place is considered "active" but someone using the camera and mouse to steer + pressing a drift key while racing round a whole map is classed as AFK.