Question on this anti-farming mechanic of which I don't know it's name

... thus the unusal topic name.

So, after 1.5 years in GW I brought myself to farm something, and like any greedy wannabe out there I went solo UW. Surprisingly I pulled a sucessful run on my first attempt, but I have a question.

It's very simple. Appart from loot scaling, I've always heard of a script of some sort that significantly lowers the drops quality of an area (or maybe on the whole game) if a user has repeatedly farmed the same place, or has simply been logged on for too much time. Can anyone enlighten me on this, how does it work exactly? How much time can I be in the game, or how many times can I acess UW without starting to waste my time on those sought after ecto's that refuse to drop? And for how long will that 'nerf' be in effect?

And is there any more of this kind of excessive farming preventive measures I should know about? I can't find any kind of reference in the farming guide in Campfire.

Thanks!

I have seen that in action once.

However thankfully it was a popup message that told me it was going to happen.

I was new, and wanted to level up and found that the char outside of a zoneline were perfect. 3 char that I could kill easily a few levels above me. Good exp for my inexperienced self.

I zoned in and out killing those 3. Eventually I got a popup message telling me about that feature. Since I wasn't after drops, I kept going. It didn't actually appear to change anything though. I kept getting stuff.

I never saw that message again however.

That there does appear to be some kind of anti farming code seems to be generally accepted. but no one seems to know how it works, just that your first time in an area appears to produce the best drops and that the longer you farm an area the lower both quality and quantity appear to go.

There is also some evidence that killing many things at once reduces quantity and some feel that an area that is farmed by many players at once will also have significantly lower drops.

As i recall there was even a thread that demonstrated that two people in separate instances of the same area killing the same creature will produce the same drop for both..

As to the underworld, I do the chaos plains a lot and I find I do get more gold drops if I have not done the run for some weeks but the number of ectos seems unaffected by how I often I have entered it. On the other hand, I generally get more ectos if I farm at times when fewer people are there (such as when 9 achievements need to be made to receive favor). but even then it's not a hard and fast rule.

Altogether, I don't think I have ever seen any one able to explain how it all works together

if one exists, it can only be speculated on because anet has neither confirmed or denied the existance of such a thing.

this^^

supposedly theres an anti-farming code, but a-net hasn't said anything about it.

btw ectos are not affected by loot scaling.

I had it happen once, about a year ago while farming the fire islands for Mursaat hammers in the Ring of Fire mission. It is a short farm, go in, kill the Jade Armors and rinse and repeat. I got a pop up in the center of the screen that said something to the effect that if i continued killing only a few things and re-entered the zone so fast the drops would significantly decrease or cease all together. I kept farming a few more runs and I got no more drops at all.

I had heard that this anti-farming code was just a "try out" and I thought they removed it awhile back but I am not sure. It can however be countered by just killing off a few more things before rezoning.

I believe you're talking about "Loot Scaling"

Off wiki;

Aww, beat me to the wiki page. I also got the message that if you do this to much the rare items will drop less. Like mentioned before, I didn't see a difference.

Well that's odd, the last 3 runs I made got no ecto's at all. Haven't been doing it a lot today, but every time I logged on to GW that's what I was doing, never did see any message, and ecto's were the only thing not dropping. 20 runs today, and all I got barely covered the 1k entrance expense.

I wasn't talking about loot scalling (if that's in response to me) but actually getting lower drop rates the more often I farmed it. From wiki as well:

What I needed to know is how much time spent in an area, or how many entries one makes, or how many of the same mobs have to be killed in order for that to kick in, like I said my last 3 runs turned out nothing, but it was only ecto's and not drops in general so I don't know... And according to you all, there isn't any consensus as to how much does it take.

No one knows, and the reason you're getting those answers is because all the "evidence" is anecdotal. ANet removed the portion of the anti-farm code that stopped drops from repeated zoning. That was the pop up that people are talking about. As far as I know, that doesn't happen anymore.

I used to farm Sorrows Furnace, and Tombs back in the days before Factions came out and the tanking trick got nerfed, or the barrage pet necro was nerfed. You could get a few runs where you get pretty decent drops, then you would get almost nothing for the next 10 runs or so. then suddenly you get drops again. Everyone who ran those new about it, we just grinded threw it. As far as I know it was never supposed to effect elite areas or HM, all other areas were fair game. The runs we did were full runs, as we were farming greens back then.
But, TBH, I haven't noticed antything of the sort in a few years.

Personally I don't think the anti- farm code is that complicated. After doing sooo many raptor runs I found the same pattern over and over, Farm first time = great drops. Gradually less and less. Then after quite a number of runs BAM great drops again and the cycle repeats.

I really think the code runs for a certain amount of zones into an area then starts again. I think it resets after a number of zones and/or is linked to an amount of time required to automatically reset the loot if the zone is not entered for a period of time.

2 cents.

I noticed this while kegfarming Vaettir.

It's a cycle. You get good, steadily worse, then good again, etc. sometimes it starts with the bad ones first.

If you kill many enemies at the same time (Cry of Pain/RoJ/Bombing, etc) you'll get less drops than if you killed the same mob using Sliver Armor or single-target damage. The extra drops aren't really worth it, though. Mostly whites and blues, and as it was posted above, the good drops aren't affected.

You used to get that pop-up message after exiting to an adjoining map (a map, NOT a town) and immediately re-entering the map you were in after 50 or 75 or 100 times - don't remember the exact # now. I got that a few times when I was trying to get a Stormray wand.

A-net did away with that when loot scaling was introduced iirc, I believe it was even stated in the release notes.

Let's get something clear - loot scaling is simply how the loot... scales, according to the party size, right? Or does it cover the time spent or the number of times an area has been farmed or entered? Many of you responded that ecto's are unnafected, wich I had read in the wiki already by for what I understood, that was in reference to the party size only and what I'm asking isn't related to party size but to the number of farms made/time. So if I'm wrong, to make it crystal clear, no matter how much time or how many entrances I make in UW, despite the other drops getting affected, ecto's aren't right?

I understood the old farming script had to do with how many times you zoned into an area, I believe within a certain amount of time.

I noticed it when doing bandit farm in pre-sear for dye. After a while, I got drops for everything, but it was pretty much nothing but collectables (stacks of leather belts). Even after the loot scaling, I noticed that after you farm a place for a while, the interesting drops tend to taper off, and you tend to get more 'junk'.

If you're farming for holiday items or collectables (for holiday collectors), than good times. It can be a hassle if you are looking for a particular item though.

I also noticed that the first few kills tend not to give you anything. I would have to knock off a few wurmlings before hitting the bandits in order to make sure I got something from the bandits.

So I think they got rid of the old farming code and replaced it with loot scaling, but I think there is some remainder of it still there. At least in my experience. I haven't done a statistical analysis of it, but my gut tells me that the longer I farm a place, the worse my drops tend to be.