A Contradiction I've noticed.

I've noticed this and I'd love for Gaile to explain should she read this. Ok Anet has a no farming policy, so much so that they have implemented an anti-farming code. Ok then they turn around and offer Fissure armor which requires farming to get or purchase the materials. Then you also have titles like Treasure hunter which require you to open not 25 or 30 high end chests but 100. So which is it Anet? Do you want us to farm or not? I mean you shouldn't chastise us with anti farming code and then entice us with a reward for the very behavior that you just told us not to do or else.

Granted it is possible to achieve the above mentioned goals without doing any farming according to Hoyle, but considering the rarity of ecto and shard drops versus the number needed for FOW armor or the number of chests that appear on average in the high end areas such a task would take a ridiculous amount of time to achieve. You also have to think about those of us who have beaten the campaigns and now just have titles as a goal. I can't devote myself to achieving those goals for fear of a drop nerf. I just wish that the stance on farming was more clear.

Anet doesnt have an anti-farming policy.

They have an anti-botting policy.

read this

http://www.guildwars.com/press/inter...e-friday61.php

Precisely; no contradiction here.

Port Sledge - on average 3 chests per run, easy as hell run <~~that is where most chest running for title is done..i know thats where i opened most of the 1500 chests i did.

There is no "real" proof of any such code.

I agree, the 'anti-farm' system is very hazy although it has to be to prevent people from by-passing it. Bot-like behaviour is most likely to trigger few, poor drops. In other words, repetitive, quiet farming will probably trigger alarm bells in the server and your drop rate will go down. It is annoying no knowing the whole truth but its only to protect the game economy.

I don't see why it is such a bad thing, FoW Armour as you said, takes awhile to get, however that is the whole purpose of it, if it was easier we would see every man and his dog running around in it. Though whether you choose to farm for it or not is your decision.

Same thing with titles, there not meant to be earnt in a day. Trust me, you feel like you have truely earnt something if you put time and effort into it (same thing with FoW armour).

It also keeps the players hooked, which is all that matters to Anet, they are a company after all.

To sum up, you will always have a choice, take the shorter boring road of farming, or take the longer road of not farming. See it as a personal victory, something that should be earnt, not farmed ;D.


"You get out what you put in"

It's not anti-farming. It's anti-botting. It code was there to prevent bots to farm the same place over and over again. If it's human controller, it will alter place to farm and the code won't activate.

We really do respect that some players like to "farm." That's ok with us, and we'll not take actions that will prohibit that. However, what we're trying to do, and what the vast majority of players wish us to do, is to put in code that restricts botting and item or gold sales. Sometimes there seems to be a conflict, but I assure you, farming for items and gold for personal use (as opposed to sales or auctions for real-world cash) is ok with us!

Heil Gaile!

Titles are for rich people. Rich people farm. Therefore titles were made to make people rich, then directly after, poor. They definitely want us to farm, because otherwise, the game is like... two weeks long.

i see allot of bots in beetletun europe district (english) they come in and talk to merchant and then leave again. i think this is because of avoiding detection by GW admins?

they want us to get ritch by diffrent methods, and they have to fight the bots

Well, the farming code can cause quite some frustration sometimes as it feels like penalizing those that try the hardest. You see, whenever i'm trying to develop a new build for either normal playing or farming the code will trigger and kill my drops for hours to come.
And it's not like i'm doing the same thing over and over again, i'm switching skills, running different routes and areas, chatting with guildies and friendslist... and after like 20 minutes he farming code kicks in and tosses me a warning that ultimately stops my fun drop dead in its tracks. "Don't overfarm" haha -.-

Sometimes the farming code pops up while casually playing an elitemission. You see there are thousands of Dredge and after my team got wiped in second room after the room with the exhaustion and weakness. We tried again and every single one of us got the Anti Farm Warning the second time we entered the warren. Not exactly fun anymore.

The Farmcode promotes paranoia, you never really know if it doesn't allready affect you or if you didn't see the warning (which you can only see with hints on and most just turn the hints off after or during the tutorial).

This doesn't exactly promote fun in playing and more clarity about the code would probably improve the fun of a lot of players and prevent threads such as this. Maybe implement a small bar that states you're in danger of triggering the farmcode? This way people know when the farmcode really kicks in and not just assume on paranoia and a streak of bad drops.

Well the anti-farm code isnt needed, its only lazyness of the programmers... u can stop bots in countless ways... most extreme is camp rankor with mesmers, and good one is at harvest temple with pathing of the monsters so they try to bodyblock u all the time... bots cant do that [go around etc]... so there arent any there...
BUT inspite all of that, harvest temple has been nerfed in drops in the update from the 15th... u cant get s*** there anymore...

So "farming for personal use is okay with us" is just a load of.... coz there never were and never will be bots in harvest, but drops are nerfed non the less... they werent so good to start with but u could get a descent item in a day or two... now... soul stone, soul stone etc...

Anet is protecting its poor game economy and bad game design with restrictions on users... not giving us other things to do except to farm, not making the game more interesting but preventing us from having fun... and u all know what happened to limiting ISP's etc.... they didnt survive... so gw is going down... slowly but going... its more boring every day...

Fixed.

Anyone who has immense amounts of farmed xp has generally farmed one spot into potentially infinite antifarming... its not something that is going to stop you from 'getting rich' or affording FoW armor.

Exactly, you don't know the scale of the effect, whether you have the effect, or whether the effect really makes any kind of difference at all. So just farm, and you'll get loot.

"what the vast majority of players wish us to do, is to put in code that restricts botting" -- I'm part of that vast majority, because I want to see online games of this kind survive, and GW in particular. WoW has had similar problems, both with bots and "sweatshop" farming. And EQ, I am told, although I do not play it.

If you have multiple farming locations you can farm each for say 30 mins and swap. I have done this for hours on end and never triggered the anti-farm code.

Congratulations! You are the 200,000 th person to say this. And you are as wrong as the first.

Guild Wars will die when its creators stop caring about it. It will die when it loses its soul. It will die because nothing lives forever.

However, it is not dying as of this moment. If Nightfall lives up to the hype it will be stronger than ever. Don't confuse your boredom for the game's poor health.

First off there IS NO ANTI FARM CODE - it's ANTI BOT.

Second, consider doing what you're supposed to do once in a while - play the game, that will fix your problems.

First, could you please be more arrogant? All i see you doing is flaming and bitching around on these forums in every single one of your posts. Not once have you contributed to a discussion without flamebaiting.
Second, read what i have written. The anti FARM CODE sometimes triggers when playing casually.
Third, change the label, it's still the same.

Now get lost.

PvP much? =D

ever heard of PvP, GvG, AB, elite missions? UW? FoW. this are the places that u can enjoy without farming.

Your opinion, I actually help people out quite a bit in the Q&A forums, if people aren't too whining/bitchy I can be nice to them.

And you're telling me NOT to tell you to play the game, I hate to inform you on that that's what the anti bot code suggests.

There is no anti FARM CODE, but yes I get your point about the code might trigger when it shouldn't but I only ever heard that happens to people that farm 'excessivly'.

Now who's flaming?

Yeah, I cannot think of any times it has ever triggered when it shouldnt. I can trigger it with excessive farming of one location. To get around it all you do is alternate between say 5 different farming locations. If you farm all the time it may trigger eventually but there is over stuff to do in Guild Wars.

Anyways, Gaile has answered so this thread should be closed - these 'discussions' always turn ugly.

I never considered it an anti-farm code. I dont think Anet is anti-farming. After all, Anet Moderators cant spawn money. THEY NEED TO FARM TOO.


I always called it "drop fatigue", but i think its a matter of perception.

Keep zoning to the same area and it wont drop as much good stuff as before. I think this is simply math unfolding.

This is my perception:

Theres a chance for good items (low), a chance for bad items(average), and a chance for amazing items (very low) and a chance for no items (low).

My example is outside Harvest Temple killing shiroken.

In 6 hours i had 5 gold drops, none were usable, lots of crap items and lots of decent items, all merchant fodder.

The more and more you go to an area, the more the probabilities start becoming obvious. Rare items are rare, common items are common. Keep farming the area and youll see more and more common items. Simply because your sample size is increasing and reinforcing the drop chance math.

Your drops arent getting crappier, your drops are just leveling out to what the statistics indicate, rare is rare, common is common.

I agree about that guy, but you're flame baiting me right now in one of my threads... hypocrites FTL.

Admins are like ninjas... you never know when one will pop up and snap your neck in two with his mind.

But if there's an anti-farming policy, well, i'm really screwed.

[QUOTE]from personal experience with the ANTI BOT code getting the second stage warning as well as the first i can say this.

you have to work hard to trigger it.

you have to act exactly like a bot for a long time to trip it.

rotate your crops and you do not trip it at all.

look like a bot
act like a bot
finally get a warning to do another field for a while.

I think its quite impressive if a human player can manage to trigger the antibot. Hitting the exact same marks all the time....lol

i fouond this article on guru in one of the threads, posted it on my guild web, so since im lazy to look for th thread ill just copy paste from my guild site.

the anti bot kicks in when the same character zones in and out in same portal and kills same mobs.

heres the article, might come handy to most of the people th have posted here:

The Anti Farming Code and How to reverse it



The Anti Farming Code is something that starts to kick in when you farm an area a lot; if you have Hints turned on you will get a message pop up about this. The Anti Farming code (the more you farm an area) makes your drops steadily worse all OVER Tyria. Some people complain of bad luck, but you will often find the source of the complaint from a hardcore single area farmer.

So a basic rule to follow is don’t over farm an area because your drops will simply decline and get worse and worse. I have farmed a lot of things over the time and to be honest I too have noticed my fair share of bad drops.

When you farm an area you get something called “Flags” added to your account, these “Flags” make your drops worse and worse. The more you farm, the more “Flags” you accumulate. There are not any different types of “Flags” depending on where you farm at all. NOTE: You can NEVER get negative flags, I assume if you work hard enough to de-flag (I’ll explain this in a later section) then your Flags may get to 0 although it is hard to tell if this is possible. I believe you do get an amount of permanent Flags. Only ever a small amount though.


OK so I have already covered that flags make your drops worse and worse and worse. A Friend of mine who shall remain unnamed farmed himself several sets of Obsidian Armour as a 55 monk. And his drops thereafter were noticeably awful, it took 2 months got him to get some semblance of an “OK” drop. His account was HEAVILY flagged indeed. Another friend of mine also just never seemed to get Globs of Ectoplasm or Obsidian Shards at all. His account was ALSO heavily flagged.

Also another problem with the Anti Farming Code is that your Average Joe isn’t going to have a clue about it, so unfortunately they will blame the source of the problem on just plain Bad Luck. It is only to an extent bad luck, but “Flags” are mostly the source behind it. You can get so badly flagged however that you won’t get Shard or Ectoplasm drops.

So what do you do when you get consistently bad drops?? You give up, I mean who wouldn’t? If you’re sat here working hard to earn some Gold but not getting as much as you used to you won’t have the motivation to carry on. Some players may think the area was simply “nerfed” and move on to a new area.

Farming too much makes the long term effects worse. It is useful to have the Hints on actually so you can see this message. If you go a while without seeing it, best to quit while you’re ahead, because if you DO see this message then you’ve got quite a fair few Flags to your account.
Flags affect all kinds of drops you get, for example you should be worried if you get a 5 energy while hexed requirement 13 Air Magic focus. Flags affect anything from the chance of a Glob of Ectoplasm to drop, to the Quality of your Gold Drops from a chest.

But here’s the rub, what can you do about this? You like farming but you’re getting flags and your drops are getting worse. Well I’ll explain it in the next Section.


So your account is heavily flagged, what can you do about it?

Completing Missions removes flags from your account, NOT quests, NOT different areas JUST MISSIONS.

Different Missions give different de-flag values, Great North Wall gives the smallest, while Hell’s Precipice gives the best De-flag.

But fighting through missions over and over gets boring doesn’t it? Well you want to run a few. Here is a list of 4 missions worth running:

-Great North Wall (I’ll explain why later)
-Riverside Province
-Sanctum Cay (not exactly “run” but you need to super tank at the end)
-Elona Reach

The above 4 missions are run-able, so are some other Ascalon missions, but the amount of de-flag is so pitiful it isn’t worth the effort.

They are in an Ascending Order of De-flags from worst to best (Riverside and Sanctum Cay do not differ hugely being one after the other in the main storyline).

OK the reason I listed Great North Wall is because it is INCREDIBLY quick to run, and you need to run 3 different missions (so GNW, RP and Elona then run GNW again) to get a cumulative reduction of “Flags”

If you run the same mission over and over you actually get MORE flags (seeing as running that mission over and over is recognized as farming whether you kill or not) and also the De-flag value of the mission is reduced. So run GNW as it is quick and can allow you to quickly go on to do Riverside and Elona (Cay is run-able too but you will probably need a Hybrid Healing Build to super tank whereas you can keep the same build for Riverside and Elona). However the above negative effects of MORE flags and a reduced de-flag value will not occur if you complete 2 different missions after it.

So a general note, 3 different missions will reduce your Account Flags but do not go back to a mission until you have done 2 others.


Tyria and Cantha have their own set of Flags, however no matter WHERE you enter The Fissure of Woe or the Underworld you will get Tyrian Flags.

Good De-flags for Tyria include: Thunderhead Keep, Ring of Fire, Abaddon’s Mouth, Hell’s Precipice (best de-flag in Tyria)

Good De-flags for Cantha include: Eternal Grove/Gyala Hatchery (common sense suggests both yields the same de-flag result) Unwaking Waters (either side of course) Raisu Palace (this appears to be the best De-flag) Imperial Sanctum (not a HUGE de-flag but worth doing anyway).

So next time a guildie wants help with Hells Precipice or Raisu Palace be sure to go along whether out of sheer generosity or selfishness in wanting to de-flag ^^


This is just a few notes I think are sort of relevant to this thread. This is a much more complex system to understand, as it is incredibly hard to pick out what factors affect certain drops; you can’t just do something different, get a Shard drop and immediately count it as a factor which changes the drop system. As I mentioned above it IS luck to a certain extent.

There is an un-confirmed Myth that the quicker you kill an enemy the better the chance for a rare item, such as an Obsidian Shard from a spider. The truth in this is incredibly hard to discern but anyway.

Drops are assigned to players in relation to the Flags on their account, so if you want to be the Shard Hog in a Guild Trip to Fissure of Woe then you need to de-flag.

However there is a lot of fine tuning to the drops system, it is not solely due to Flags, drops also depend on what you did in the battle and your overall performance, so for example your damage output, damage taken etc. Taking Part in battle is also a factor, leeching won’t do you any good; if you just stand there you really don’t have much chance for anything good at all.


Mass Farming a single area = Flags
Doing a mission (not the same one until you have done 2 other different ones) reduces account Flags, the amount depends on the mission itself, remember Hells Precipice is the Best Tyrian de-flag and Raisu Palace is the best Canthan de-flag.
Drops are calculated from your Flags and several smaller factors like performance in Battle.

I’m sure a lot of you will think is complete and utter BS; it is a difficult system to understand and also to believe. But if you are quite a serious farmer like me it becomes obvious when you are indeed “Flagged to Hell”

I will welcome any questions you have and try my best to answer them as much as I can. This is all transcribed from memory, I have not written much of it down before, mostly rough notes and records.

If and When I discover more, I will Edit the first post and add what I find, I will post at the end of the post to notify the changes as well.

Enjoy and don’t hesitate to ask me anything, if it is more convenient feel free to send me a Whisper in Game as Sithicus Dias.

/end copy

just repeating it again, credits not to me, but its all making sence from "programing" side, and from "using" side

Unfourtunately the author of that post has absolutely NO proof what-so-ever about anything he wrote, has absolutely no data to support his claims, and is writing purly on speculation. In all likely hood, he has never even extensively tested the effects of the code.

Most people who read that thread found, like I did, most of it was BS if not pure lies... so do NOT take anything that guy said as truth, or reliable information...

Uh, I don't know why people are saying there's no anti-farm code... there have been repeated screenshots of the message you get in other threads... it's just kind of hard to get it to happen if you're actually a person.

gaile may have replied but she hasnt answered anything, she says anet dont mind farming yet there is a code to stop bots farming, well guess what, that same code effects legit farmers so in essence punish ALL farmers with the intention of catching bots out.

its like the government saying they dont mind the army shooting people but they dont want civilians doing it so they are issuing EVERYONE with toy rubber guns, the army can still go to war but it wont be as effective cos of the rubber gun code.

basicly its anet again contradicting themselves as they always do.

i will explain the difference for you hopefully eliminating the idiotic urge to call an anti bot code an anti farm code

that message tells a person who is a legit farmer to move on to a different spot for a while and farm something else.

someone who is not able to farm anything except one item in one spot is truly pathetic.

A BOT DOES NOT SEE THAT MESSAGE AND KEEPS GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS EVEN AFTER THE LOOT STOPS DROPPING

do you see the difference now?

a farmer can farm 10 hours a day if he simply moves on to different spots without losing a thing to the code

Your analogy is terrible and confusing.

The government wants soldiers to use guns.
The government doesnt want civilians to use guns.
The government gives everyone rubber guns.
The soldiers are ineffective.

a better analogy to Anet would be:

The government wants soldiers to use guns.
The government doesnt want civilians to use guns.
The government makes guns harder to use unless you are a soldier.
The soldiers are hindered but they can still use their guns.

Heres the problem:
The civilians who want to use guns will find a way to disguise themselves as soldiers.

A HUMAN player can adapt and change. Botting programs are merely imitating the human farmer, which is why bot-finding techniques will false flag legitimate players.

I think that the "majority" of players like to farm and "some" players care about your code.
I see the code as an attempt to stop botting that does not work very well.Kinda like a band aid.

can you proove him wrong? if you cant, you just ASSUMING he is, right?
how do YOU know the mechanics of an antifarming code to be so sure tha he is wrong. to be honest with you, i have quite big farming experience, and whatever he wrote seems to make much more sence then anything i read on this thread so far.

so i supose you know EXACTLY how this works.... plz enlighten us if you know more then this person, because oviously most of the people posting in this thread have no idea whats an anti-farming code is.

we all know what happens when you are assuming things

its more pathetic to insist the anti farm code is an anti bot code. the actual code prevents over farming of an area, it is an anti farm code or if you wish to be pedantic which i expect you do then you could call it an anti overfarm code.
it does not eliminate bots from the area so it is NOT and anti bot code.

Well....

The "Code" does not prevent a good farmer from farming it will hinder bots attempts to make gold. Therefore it could be called an "Anti-Bot Code". You could farm all day long and never trigger it whereas a bot usually farms only a few areas and stands a greater chance of triggering it.

For example a farmer could: -
*Farm Elona Minos for 15 mins
*Farm Drok Trolls for 15 mins
*Farm Hydras for 15 mins
*Farm outside Tascas Demise for 15 mins
*Farm Giants and Griffons outside Seekers Passage (I think) for 15 mins
*Farm UW for the period of time it takes to do 2 Smite runs
*Spider farm in FOW
*Farm Giants in Drednoughts Drift & Snakes Dance

I havnt even mentioned Factions areas.

Therefore it does not prevent you farming as you can farm in various areas for ages.