Is ANET approving of green farming?

A lot of you have heard of the method. All you do is kill boss group and send your henchies and heroes away, then farm the boss solo. I used it to get tons of greens this last weekend. I thought that it was an exploit that would soon be fixed, but maybe not!

I wanted to point this thread out to some of you that may not look in wiki section that much.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10079572

Basically, it is a thread that discussing why players are not getting xp and drops if they are outside the aggro range during combat. That is another argument that I do not want to start in this thread. My point to making this thread is this: Does this change that seems to have been made to stop power leveling signal an approval by ANET to green farming?

Could you tell me again where the connection is?

Highly doubtful, as they are trying to making farming in general impossible. It isn't working totally, but they are sure trying.

What I don't get is.... once they completely rid the game of all forms of farming, how will people get the ectos and shards, gold, etc etc to buy high end items.... ??? eBay? eGay.... NO. ANet is simply setting themselves up for more and more users to turn to eGay and the Chinese farmers to supply them with the massive amount of gold for high end items/15k armor/FoW armors they want.

Quite simply, if we had farming, economy prices would go DOWN seeing as ectos would be in abudant supply, gold would be more abudant, and items would be readily available. Just my 2 cents.

My point is that this method of green farming is not a mistake or player found exploit, but something that ANET did on thier own.

If they approved of green farming please explain this ... 54 runs to get darksong .. NO darksong. Me and 2 heroes that were planted out of range before you ask. On the last attempt not only did I get air but the farm code warning on left side of screen telling me monsters were now out of loot (they were dropping air before message gg anet). This was a char that was 40 hours old and on second to last mission so obviously shouldnt have had farm code.

No, it is a found exploit. A minor one however. The concept is:

If you can order your henchies away and solo a boss with 40+ pts in a given attribute, you should get the drop and not share it. Makes sense to me.

The "farm code" has a shorter life span and activates faster than most people realize, since most people don't have their messages turned on. You're seriously wondering why your drops would be nerfed after 54 straight runs to kill the same guy, and probably not clearing out the area? You need to do something else. Farming the same guy over and over and over is going to give you nothing almost all the time, so it's worthless unless you're doing it really really fast.

I can't comment to your experience with it, but I can comment to mine. I must have farmed like 10 deathbringers and 5 exuro's wills all in a row. I got no farm code and recieved a green probably about 1/3 of the time.

What I really want to discuss is if this: This seems proof to me that is method is not an exploit. ANET had to realize that people would do this to solo bosses.

They aren't condoning farming, but just trying to balance out the Elonian economy (and maybe try and get a few new Nfers), they probably thought NF greens were too high and to dilute the price increased the supply. Also this may have been just to let the casual player (like me) have more chance to get a green that weekend (like me).

Lol

Trust me I was wondering till run 20 .. then it was just to see if he would EVER drop it. As to time I had him down to about 2.5 minutes tyvm

The comment about people relying on chineese farmer/e-bay plat and ectos to purchase 15k or FoW armor didn't make sense to me. Why wouldn't regular farmers be able to farm if chineese farmers can?

"Quite simply, if we had farming, economy prices would go DOWN seeing as ectos would be in abudant supply"

all in tyhe hands of farmers sellin for high price, no help for me ether way.

but every double drop weekend i feel more inclined to beleve that yes, i havent got any drop since release of nightfall, not green or gold, only crappy green like the shing jea stuff and non max gold, and even so only like 5 of them, all nightfall is overfarmed, heroes make even more inclined, and i didnt even new you could leave them away to do it easyer, lol, gw is turnin to busines more than player skills, i would be happy to know farmers are over, the best solution ever is a npc that makes items incribeable, so everyone can make theyre own cool skin stuff cheap, but seen there is more behind than we see, like those crazy thread of pricecheck gurus cryin on how economy would crash, cuz they would lose millionsmaybe they put some money on anet and, might be a bigger plot since the game is free, havin a wage from internet gold selles is proftable.
what i know its no drops for regular no more, since i wont pay overpriced 100k+ or more for anything, there should be a better control on what accounts get as drop.

^^ good point Trvth.

If I'm going after greens with heroes or solo I usually only do about 5 runs in a row, even if I'm hitting more than one boss up. I'd say on a normal day I'd get 1 in 5, but it's probably actually lower than that.

I do have to aggree though that using heroes/henchies isn't an exploit because you're still responsible for killing the boss.

And Darksong is really quick, me and a guildie got 2 spears in about 5 runs a couple of weeks ago, so I'd say you just have some really really poor luck lekprekan.

I used the hero exploit over the weekend, and probably only played 8 hours or so.

Got 21 greens anyway...I want them to fix it personally, but while its their I'll use it!

The triple weekend rolls around, those who haven't been farming but have been thinking about farming decide to join the fun, because, hey, triple the drop rate.

So you get hundreds upon thousands (maybe) people farming the same boss, with a group or with the 'Go Away Hench' method.

Key point to remember... Green weapons do NOT drop like candy. To expect to get a green item every time you go out is ridiculous, even under normal circumstances. To expect to get a green to drop more frequently is just as absurb. Why? 10-100 times more people are farming that same boss now!

For argument's sake I'll make up some unreal numbers.

Normal Conditions
Drop Rate of X Green Item upon kill: 5%-10%
Number of people killing boss with X Green Item: 50 people/kills per hour at any given time

Let's pretend that your chance of getting a green, with said conditions works out with this formula:

% Chance of Green Drop = [(Chance of Green Drop From Boss X)/(Number of times Boss killed per hour)] X 100

Your chance of getting a green drop with that from that boss with that fake formula is 10%-20%, not bad.

Now let's introduce triple drop weekend:

Triple Drop Rate Conditions
Drop Rate of X Green Item upon kill: 15%-30%
Number of people killing boss with X Green Item: 250 people/kills per hour at any given time

Using: % Chance of Green Drop = [(Chance of Green Drop From Boss X)/(Number of times Boss killed per hour)] X 100

You will get: 6% - 12% chance of getting that green drop that run, during triple drop weekend.

What?! The percentage of getting that green item went down! Yes, your percentage of getting a drop, even on triple weekend, went down, soley based on the number of people killing that same boss hoping for a green.

Of course, the numbers and formula are completely false. But it is understood that boss's suffer from overfarming, even on weekends that increase their drop rate. The numbers are there to make people understand that concept better.

Every time such an event rolls around, people are annoyed afterwards because they felt cheated. Every time people are surprised that they had a tough time.

Look at the numbers, understand tripling drop rates means NOTHING if many many more people are farming that same spot.

Also remember, getting a green is also based on luck.

This is how I'd like to see ANet handle greens:

Kill a boss and he will always drop his green.


Result:

Greens available to all.


Why this is good:

1. Depresses green prices and that makes greens what they were supposed to be; a good weapon choice for casual players.
2. Removes grind/solo boss farming for greens.
3. Provides incentive to play through the game and explore map areas. PvE players will go through areas looking for the bosses that have weapons they like.
4. Rewards full-human-party play since heroes and henchmen steal drops, but doesn't penalize hero/hench parties too harshly. There is still a good chance that the boss will drop a green for a party composed of a single player and henchmen/heroes.
5. Allows heroes to be resonably well equipped without breaking a player's bank.

Before you flame me... I've solo farmed greens like mad and for the most part I think it has lessened my enjoyment of this game. It's a redundant way to spend a morning. Besides, green are simply good weapons for PvE play. With the new PvP equipment options, there is no advantage to PvE characters anymore. I'm sure some will disagree with my opinions, and that's fine. I'd like to hear why if so.

EDIT: If ANet wants to add "special" weapons to the game... then let them do it like they did with FoW armor. FoW weapons with unique skins would be a welcome addition to this game. If they were inscribable then it would be even better.

Funny, back when it was double green drop event at Factions. I got at least 2 greens while farming away there. But during this triple green events, i got zero while farming all over the place in Nightfall. I do believed that ANet want to open the flood gate for the green items. Maybe, they want to reduce the amount of farming and botting it takes to get greens in the first place. Not to mention to controll the market price for green items.

But if they want to controll the economy of green items, A-NEt should just place collectors in different areas (maybe hard to reach places) where you need to collect like 50 to 100 pieces of certain items to get a green. This would work better than farming the bosses since half the time you can't even get it dropped for you.

The factions weekend was also triple greens, not double.

i completely agree with you

Esprit,

You are WRONG!! Stop giving out FALSE information.

Guild Wars is an "instanced" game. When I go into a zone I have my own instance, the bosses in my instance have the same percentage of dropping if there are 10 people on the servers or 1,000,000 people on the servers.

This is FACT. It is the nature of instancing.

Wouldn't people just farm the items they need to get the green?

Some green weapons are priced over 50K which is quite insane IMO, because they are mostly farmable

Also, such a fow idea can be better implented as a "uber hard quest" reward, with offcourse some mesmers with disenchant siggy's so that they arent 55-able :P

Is going into an instance with 8 people, then asking 7 of them to move out of range an exploit?

No. It's just hard to convince players to give up their share of loot.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned, is are the loot drops really adjusted? I didn't test it, but if you're out of range, then an item won't drop for you. But is it really dropped for someone else, or just silently ignored like for henchies.

Apart from that, it's not an exploit. If that were the case, then running past attaxes were an exploit as well. You obviously aren't clearing all the mobs you're supposed to.

Exploit is killing a boss that's stuck on terrain, or similar. This is just convenient use of provided mechanics. As such, Anet needs to evaluate, whether the overal item influx via these methods is having an effect on economy or not. If it has an undesirable effect, than the system needs to be adjusted.

To be honest, I'd like more greens like endgame greens. But as suggested before, as reward for quests.

A use for Masters quests maybe?

Not necessarily. There is no gold cap in the game. That is to say there is no line of code in the game servers that says there can only be X amount of gold in the entire game. Because of this gold is infinite in supply and is limited only by how much people are picking up and keeping versus how much they spend. The more gold you have kept in the game instead of spent causes the buying power of gold to drop. What you could get for 5K is now 10K because gold is only half as valuable as it used to be due to the increased amount of it in player hands. The more you have of something the less valuable it becomes. Items this is good in a way but currency you don't want that happening. It's like when Germany printed a bunch of Duetschmarks in WWII. they didn't have the gold to back up the currency they just made more of it so in the end the Deutschmark was virtually worthless, people burned them for heat. If more gold comes into the game then you will see prices rise since one gold or one platinum doesn't buy what it used to.

@OP -> This article indirectly applies to the situation.
http://eu.guildwars.com/community/ar..._item_farming/

So the means of bringing the wealth distribution back to normal is holding triple green weekend events?

Or a simple answer to "Is ANET approving of green farming?" = Yes

To be honest, with the addition of hero's, the amount of equipment needed has jumped a huge amount so demand for stuff has gone up.
They could also be testing drop rates and impact for future changes.

Fact or Fiction?

The amount of green drops in a region of the world is restricted by time.

I highly doubt this is a real fact but after this weekend I started to second guess myself. On Sunday some guildies and I farmed Modti for the staff, we ran about 20 or so times with no droppings, at which point we gave up and started doing other things. Later on Sunday night (10-11ish) we started to farm it again because the cold damage on the staff is just too attractive, this time we made about 8 runs and got 5 drops. This has led us to think perhaps ANET put a cap on green drops over time? In a way let's say "No same green item in the same region(US, Euro, etc) can drop more than xx times in an hour"? That would explain why during "busier" times of the same day certain boss would have a lower drop rate than others.

There is no simple answer to "Is ANET approving of green farming?", in a way the answer is Yes and No. Unless you are purely into PVP, everyone is involved in one or another form of farming, it's the reason why we go to areas such as FoW, UW, Tomb, SF, etc. What ANET doesn't want is over excessively farming of items that are harder for normal players to get and sell them to make profits, i.e. the Chinese gold farming. The ability to control your heroes/henchmen and "Triple Green Drop" weekends shouldn't be viewed as ANET trying to promote green farmings, but rather I see those as ANET's attempts to fight the "Gold Farming" by making the green items more commonly found, thus reduce the needs to get gold to purchase them in game or on Ebay.

I'd have to agree with fog, or at least hope... if drops really are affected by how many people are farming an area/boss, then that defeats one of the important aspects of instancing. since ANet chose to instance the game, drops should be treated as such (I have no knowledge that they aren't). running also only occurs due to instancing. if it was one big instance like a few other games then you wouldn't be able to be run and drops would definitely be affected.

Why do you want prices low? High prices = good, because I have a legit way of getting lots of money fast and you fools don't! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

I think they don't mind farming to a point. (anti farm code) They probly just checked on wiki and saw if the green weapons were well listed so that normal players could find 'em. Also to make sure that they'red not be any 200k scyths running around.

Most they time, they have bots. Lots of bots, right?

And due to this farming nerf, the use of bots by gold selling companies has gone up in numbers. They just send them in, grind as much as they can, and put it in storage. AI bots dont care how long it takes or how fustrating it is. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. The reason legit human players dont do this is because, only being playing one character at a time, has a disadvantage to about 20 bots farming the same area.

So, the player gets fustrated with farming and gives up. But this player still wants the money, and seeing as he cant get the money himself.. what does he do?

He buys it of Ebay. He gives the gold sellers exactly what they want.

You see, this farming nerf didnt help get rid of botting OR rate of ebay gold selling. Botting rate has gone up to keep up with the higher demand for ebayed gold. ANet has just made it worse... harder farming = more bots... more bots = more gold to sell... harder farming + more bots + more gold to sell = more gold selling to the player.

Now lets say that its not bots farming the loot, and thats it's a "chinese gold farmer." This difference is the gold farmer farms it as his JOB, his work, his work to support his family. The players are just farming to get the items they want for their little wants and needs for their own entertainment. Hence, the player getting fustrated easily, the chinese gil farmer cant just get fustrated and stop farming and just buy the gold it off ebay. He has something important to support. He can't just quit and find an alternative.

Just my 2 cents.

These are all very good points, but this thread is quickly turning into the standard have/have not or chinese farmer good/bad type.

My original point was that this type of farming is set-up by ANET. They want us to farm greens this way so that we don't have to buy ebay gold or what not. Anyone want to comment on this?

Anet has never had a problem with the casual farmer, they commented on that several times and the double/tripple drop weekends are prove of that.

What I don't get is the anti-farm code. Why does it seem to kick in before it shows up on my screen? Actually, why does it not say on my screen that it's kicked in? Why does it seem like the anti-farming code is affecting my character throughout the rest of the game?