A fix for the AFK farmers for good.

[Smoosh.2718]

Got an idea that might fix the issue of afk farmers for good, make all summons have a timer 60-120 minutes before you MUST respawn it, this way if a player is found farming constantly or for long periods of timing without movement or then that player must be using macro's to farm.

Another factor to consider, the removal of recasting other abilities (make 1 the ONLY skill you can recast).

AFK play should never be encouraged and more actions need to be done to combat it, the removal of the recast function would work for the Reaper 4 afk farmers and the change in minion/summon times would also prevent players from reaping rewards while afk for long periods of time. (this would need to apply to ranger pets as well).

What I propose:

All summons have a 60-120 minute timer before they are removed from the world and need to be resummoned, Turrets, pets, minions.Auto-cast to be removed from all skills apart from skill 1. (skill 1 has to be repressed manually to attack a new target and will not keep going off when left alone).

These two actions should kill AFK farmers for good. (if players are skill doing this after the change then you can guarentee they are using a macro to farm and that is against the ToS).

[Galmac.4680]

Even a 30min timer would be ok!

[Shiyo.3578]

Summons should be invincible, do no damage, but function like one wolf pack. You press their utility/pet action button(if ranger), they "attack" through you the next time you land an attack.

[Yggranya.5201]

@Smoosh.2718 said:Got an idea that might fix the issue of afk farmers for good, make all summons have a timer 60-120 minutes before you MUST respawn it, this way if a player is found farming constantly or for long periods of timing without movement or then that player must be using macro's to farm.

Another factor to consider, the removal of recasting other abilities (make 1 the ONLY skill you can recast).

AFK play should never be encouraged and more actions need to be done to combat it, the removal of the recast function would work for the Reaper 4 afk farmers and the change in minion/summon times would also prevent players from reaping rewards while afk for long periods of time. (this would need to apply to ranger pets as well).

What I propose:

All summons have a 60-120 minute timer before they are removed from the world and need to be resummoned, Turrets, pets, minions.Auto-cast to be removed from all skills apart from skill 1. (skill 1 has to be repressed manually to attack a new target and will not keep going off when left alone).

These two actions should kill AFK farmers for good. (if players are skill doing this after the change then you can guarentee they are using a macro to farm and that is against the ToS).

Or anet can do what they have been doing: Absolutely nothing. Get used to it.

[vandrefalk.6823]

@Galmac.4680 said:Even a 30min timer would be ok!

Even a 10min timer would be ok!

How often do you stay in exact one place longer than 10 minutes unless it's to afk farm with those exploits.

Get rid of afk farmers once and for all.

[Yellow Rainbow.6142]

Why does it bother people so much? Just play your game and let them do whatever they want. It's a game, and anet is okay with it.

[Astyrah.4015]

@Dondarrion.2748 said:

@Galmac.4680 said:Even a 30min timer would be ok!

Even a 10min timer would be ok!

How often do you stay in exact one place longer than 10 minutes unless it's to afk farm with those exploits.

i afk a lot and a lot longer than 10 minutes (and by that i mean alt-tabbing away from gw2 so the game gets no input and starts the afk timer) when waiting for metas for example or taking a break from the game. if it's a meta and it starts at xx:45 and it's still xx:08 on my clock -and- i have nothing better to do then i alt-tab (gw2 thinks i will be afk and start the afk timer) because leaving the map or logging out may lock me out from re-entering or trying to join the populated map with commanders at xx:35 just before the meta begins. so i will afk longer than 10 minutes.

that said i don't play ranger or necro (very rarely for either), so a change to minion/pet timers wouldn't affect me but if they changed map-wide participation to be cancelled (another solution cooked up by other threads) because you were afk for longer than 10 or 30 minutes then that's not right for any class/profession.　

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@"Smoosh.2718" said:All summons have a 60-120 minute timer before they are removed from the world and need to be resummoned, Turrets, pets, minions.

no need to put it on a 70+ minute timer... for most open world zones/maps the afk timer seems to be ~60ish minutes, in personal instances (like story or home) it's about 1.5~2hours last i tried to observe. if you tried to afk for a little more than an hour in the open world without any input (including alt-tabbing), the game will definitely kick you back to character select. so your solution already exists sorta.

the thing is afk farmers are already aware of this as well and they likely do subtle movements (or use a macro to do it) to circumvent the afk timer. even a 10 minute or 30minute minion/pet "kill timer" would do nothing to prevent this.

what's needed is better action from arenanet because all these automated solutions either already exists or just as easily worked around with by those exploiting. but yeah it's been shown that either there's inaction from arenanet or it's really hard for them to just ban anyone right off or automatically as the risk of (false-positive) flagging someone is high.

[Teratus.2859]

@Smoosh.2718 said:All summons have a 60-120 minute timer before they are removed from the world and need to be resummoned, Turrets, pets, minions.Auto-cast to be removed from all skills apart from skill 1. (skill 1 has to be repressed manually to attack a new target and will not keep going off when left alone).

This is exactly the kind of change to minions that I don't want to see in the game and the reason why I have a problem with AFK farmers in the first place.This is exactly what I fear will happen to counter AFK farming one day and the result will be killing a profession mechanic that I love to play.

I will not accept being punished for other peoples bad behaviour, I would much rather see these people banned from the game as they deserve to be.

As for the autocast.. I wouldn't mind this change but other players do get some genuine use out of this ability, so once again it would be punishing innocent players for the behaviour of bad players.. so again no, just ban the AFK farmers.

[Teratus.2859]

@"Shiyo.3578" said:Summons should be invincible, do no damage, but function like one wolf pack. You press their utility/pet action button(if ranger), they "attack" through you the next time you land an attack.

I can tell you from personal experience with Minions that this change would literally make a Dagger/Warhorn Necro invincible XDThe amount of incoming lifesteal would be insane lol

[vandrefalk.6823]

@Astyrah.4015 said:

@Dondarrion.2748 said:

@Galmac.4680 said:Even a 30min timer would be ok!

Even a 10min timer would be ok!

How often do you stay in exact one place longer than 10 minutes unless it's to afk farm with those exploits.

i afk a lot and a lot longer than 10 minutes (

and by that i mean alt-tabbing away from gw2 so the game gets no input and starts the afk timer

) when waiting for metas for example or taking a break from the game. if it's a meta and it starts at xx:45 and it's still xx:08 on my clock -and- i have nothing better to do then i alt-tab (gw2 thinks i will be afk and start the afk timer) because leaving the map or logging out may lock me out from re-entering or trying to join the populated map with commanders at xx:35 just before the meta begins. so i will afk longer than 10 minutes.

that said i don't play ranger or necro (very rarely for either), so a change to minion/pet timers wouldn't affect me but if they changed map-wide participation to be cancelled (another solution cooked up by other threads) because you were afk for longer than 10 or 30 minutes then that's not right for any class/profession.

Exactly, this isn't an AFK timer to kick players, but an AFK timer to despawn minions/turrets/etc.You can still hang around a WP waiting for a map meta; as you said, you've alt-tabbed out doing other stuff but your character also just sits there in GW2. That's fine.

[Sugar Min.5834]

@Yellow Rainbow.6142 said:Why does it bother people so much? Just play your game and let them do whatever they want. It's a game, and anet is okay with it.

^This.It's their game, let them do what they want, not like they are hacking or scamming. There are a lot worse problems in the game.

[Astyrah.4015]

@Mil.3562 said:

@Yellow Rainbow.6142 said:Why does it bother people so much? Just play your game and let them do whatever they want. It's a game, and anet is okay with it.

^This.It's their game, let them do what they want, not like they are hacking or scamming. There are a lot worse problems in the game.

⇑yeah, imo the pvp bots and those cheating players using ability exploits in a match are far more worse and deserve more attention from arenanet (and are bigger fish to catch too)

[Antycypator.9874]

Minions should slowly take necromancer's life force or they should have a time duration like... any other summons? 30-60seconds and die, then CD.

[kharmin.7683]

@Mil.3562 said:

@Yellow Rainbow.6142 said:Why does it bother people so much? Just play your game and let them do whatever they want. It's a game, and anet is okay with it.

^This.It's their game, let them do what they want, not like they are hacking or scamming. There are a lot worse problems in the game.

Almost every time I make this point, I get accused of being one of these AFK farmers. (sigh) Good luck.

[Pifil.5193]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Mil.3562 said:

@"Yellow Rainbow.6142" said:Why does it bother people so much? Just play your game and let them do whatever they want. It's a game, and anet is okay with it.

^This.It's their game, let them do what they want, not like they are hacking or scamming. There are a lot worse problems in the game.

Almost every time I make this point, I get accused of being one of these AFK farmers. (sigh) Good luck.

Yeah, people do seem to like throwing those accusations around. "If you're not for my idea you must be one of them..."

I don't care about the autocast, I've never set it to anything other than skill 1 myself but perhaps others rely on it for some reason.

Despawning minions after 30 minutes or an hour would only cause AFK players to set reminders for 29 or 59 minutes. It wouldn't really solve anything and would inconvenience active players more than AFK ones. Bad idea.

[Syronus.7605]

I'd rather see auto-cast skills not count for real input when the game decides whether you are afk or not. There is an afk timer in the game already, why can players circumvent it using auto-cast? They shouldn't be able to.

[aspirine.6852]

I have had people in GW1 that did nothing but feather farming, everyone plays the game they want to do it. And f these people want to park their char and do some afk farming I dont mind at all. Just let them do it :/

[Deeyra.1476]

Just remove autocasting. Thats the only way to AFK farm without the use of macros. Then add some actual security to the game. But there is no time for that. Must add new gemstore items!

[kharmin.7683]

@Deeyra.1476 said:Just remove autocasting. Thats the only way to AFK farm without the use of macros. Then add some actual security to the game. But there is no time for that. Must add new gemstore items!

No, thank you. I prefer to use autocasting where and when I want to when I play the game.

[Astyrah.4015]

@Deeyra.1476 said:Then add some actual security to the game. But there is no time for that. Must add new gemstore items!

as long as it's server-side security, im fine with it.

but if it's anything like a root-kit malware like anti-cheat, which requests kernel level OS access like Easy Anti Cheat or BattleEye, then no, i don't want that malware in my system and it's a lazy way/implementation of curbing cheaters (and as usual cheaters find a way to circumvent it) -- also, it makes games unplayable for linux users via wine.

[kratan.4619]

This would fix nothing, people would just start timing their recast times for minions. Also, I wish my turrets would stay up for an hour that would be awesome.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

I highly doubt the pve afk farms are very profitable, they dont really effect anyone else. Its the pvp bots that are the main issue.

[Obtena.7952]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Mil.3562 said:

@Yellow Rainbow.6142 said:Why does it bother people so much? Just play your game and let them do whatever they want. It's a game, and anet is okay with it.

^This.It's their game, let them do what they want, not like they are hacking or scamming. There are a lot worse problems in the game.

Almost every time I make this point, I get accused of being one of these AFK farmers. (sigh) Good luck.

Anet must be the biggest AFK farmers :smile:

Creative solutions in this thread ... with no problem to solve.

[Ototo.3214]

Could also make it so pet damage doesn't count for kill credit. If just the pet is attacking, they don't get anything. Wont stop people from making some sort of macro to skill spam automatically but still, would help.

[kharmin.7683]

@Ototo.3214 said:Could also make it so pet damage doesn't count for kill credit. If just the pet is attacking, they don't get anything. Wont stop people from making some sort of macro to skill spam automatically but still, would help.

As a ranger main, I completely disagree with this idea.