An Alternative To Loot-Scaling ( And Possible Solution To Bots )

Loot-scaling !! A good idea, for the most part although let's face it it hasn't dealt with the issue of bots now has it. just look at Granite Citadel, Port Sledge, Bergen Hotsprings to name just a few and you can see a veritable army of mechanised money makers streaming out of the doors in an endless line.

My point is that although loot-scaling has dealt a critical blow to actual 55 farmers and by that I mean a real player who plays the 55 Monk character and spends their time and effort to 55 farm ( which btw I have no problem with ) the problem of bot farmers has not gone away. Infact not only has it not gone away it has indeed got worse since loot-scaling arrived in the game. Rather than be confined to a couple of towns they are now almost everywhere and instead of making farming less profitable for these bot hard mode has indeed made it more profitable it would seem.

So what's the alternative !! Minimum Party Size Limitations ( henceforth referred to as MPSL ). If I go to Ascalon City my party size cannot exceed 4, in Beacons Perch it's 6 and in good old Droknars Forge it is 8. Every town, city, outpost or otherworldly safe haven has a maximum party limit. There is a reason for this and that being that the areas outside these places are deemed of a certain difficulty level and that this is the party size you should be in to be adventuring in these areas.

If each explorable area had a MPSL that was determined by the maximum party size of the town that it was accessible from then you could not run out of the Granite Citadel with a single 55 Monk because the game would not let you out the door unless there were 8 players / heroes / henchies in your party regadless of if you were in normal or hard mode.

55 bot farming relies primarily on 2 things. A: The ability to zone into an instance alone and B: Speed, the fast turn around in order to maximise time over gain value. MPSL solves both these issues that hard mode and loot-scaling does not and what's more it does not screw over the players who do actually go around with parties of guildies, friends, heroes and henchmen which is how GW was always intended to be played.

Just my opinion

Sorry, I have to disagree. There are a lot of folks in the game who enjoy Soloing an area. Farmers obviously prefer to go it alone, but there are also non-farmers in the game who just enjoy the challenge of trying to clear an area by themselves or with a party of 4 in an 8 man area. I don't think the option of soloing should be taken away if it's something we really want to do.

As far as a bot solution, it wouldn't work. The bots would just be programmed to grab 7 henchies before hitting the door.

Meh... could work.

Afterall, if a player wanted to solo farm then they only need bring heroes and henchies, then flag them back at the beginning.

Maybe bots couldn't handle that.... but who knows?

Actually, the OP's idea won't work for the same reason that Loot Scaling doesn't work.

The "gold farmer bots" simply gather up a full group. The people who run these bots on a "professional" level already have multiple computers and accounts. Pre-loot-scaling, each computer can farm an area by itself with the right build. Now, it's just a matter of making full groups of bots. One bot acts as the leader, and other bots follow it. Then, since the panic response to firestorm has been reduced, the bots can simply throw in their aoe spells on a staggered basis.

While you might think that it would reduce efficiency (after all, you now need 8 accounts to do what 1 account used to do), consider that the non-bot farmer is also suffering the same reduced efficiency.

Someone please tell me what I'm missing in this analysis. I know Anet intends to nerf bot farming, but did they really want to nerf solo / small-group farming?

It's a common misconception that this nerf was aimed at stopping botting. This was never even stated in that big dev update thread. The purpose of the nerf is to cut back the inflation of market value items caused by merchant farming, which bots happen to do a lot of. It is therefore curtailing the major effect bots have on the larger GW population rather than actually eliminating bots.

Your suggestion is fairly pointless, as it's just putting the nail in the coffin. The loot scaling change already is like having invisible henchies in your solo party at all times, they could've made the effect just as strong as a party if they really wanted to.