Creative Anti-Farming

It seems that everytime there is an effort made to slow farming by nerfing skills another and, in many cases, more effective, method pops up in the wake. I wonder if bringing back a re-vamped and more effective anti-farming code isn't the best way to stop the SF, 600/Smite, and speed clear problems. That doesn't send the play styles to the graveyard, but it would slow down the amount of loot coming out of the elite areas considerably. It would also let casual type farmers that have spent time getting a character outfitted and to the proper areas have some fun, experiment with the builds, learn the processes involved, make some money, and then move on.

Or, in the same way that Nicholas can only be traded with once per week, or a Zaishen Quest can only be turned in once per day per character, entry to the elite areas and dungeons could be limited in some way. I know that the Favor of the Gods was designed to be a limit to UW/FoW access, but with the advent of entry scrolls that dwindled. Enforcing a new limit might be good for dungeons as well as elite areas. If one character has opened an end chest today maybe that character gets nothing out of opening it a second time.

If you had the combined problem of keeping a goodly chunk of the player base happy without touching skills at all, and still slowing down the flow of goods from the most used farming builds how would you go about it? Are there any creative anti-farmers out there?

I would be okay with restrictions/limits for the elite areas of GW2. But if this was implemented into GW1, the amount of QQ would be insane.
I would increase the action against repeated farming of an area/mob. Skills and farms are left alone, a broad range of farms and creative farmers are encouraged, and mindless farming of the same area from both players and bots is discouraged.

Also, I would remove loot scaling. That's not anti-farming, however.

IF there was to be a nerf of SF/600/other overpowered farming builds, which the devs are talking out-loud about, (hi Linsey, hope you think long and hard about it first!) I think the OP's ideas here show the LEAST amount of farm-hate. Limitation > complete denial

and yeah, if the devs are gonna hit farming builds, I would MUCH rather see it as the farm code put back, or limited entry, or something along those lines than a complete shutdown.

Whether farming actually NEEDS to be hit, and why, is another topic entirely.

how else are people gonna get money?
power trading is just as boring as farming especially with the awful trade system guild wars has.Stop queening about farmers and make 1

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard "yeah, restrict how the players play so they can't farm anymore, people aren't gonna accept this, you can nerf skills and buff enemies, but you can't say to the player " hey I'm gonna make a change that affects how and what you can do in GW""


Uw really is if you farmed it enough times, you get tired of it and don't farm as much, and with the unreliable pugs, not many people are too willing to see another fail run.

Restriction is a lazy method of balancing the rewards. If a designer isn't willing to create challenging content to match the rewards then the player base shouldn't be restricted to the content itself (Oh hai thar WoW).

That's the problem; casual players fail to realize how many millions of gold many of the titles cost, and are completely unattainable by conventional playing. All the events in the world will not give you enough sweets, booze, and party points to max those titles without farming. Good luck affording 5-10 thousand lockpicks to max treasure hunter. And how exactly would the OP suggest I find and identify 10,000 golds when only 1-2 drop per person in an entire 8-man vanquish? Jealousy is most certainly clouding peoples judgment when they so vehemently oppose rewards for the people who actually sacrifice their time and work for them.

Too late to add hard restrictions.. would cause all the farmers to leave this game.
+ There is no reason to punish people who are playing a lot (farming a lot/getting more money than casual players).
What's wrong with how things are now?

Ok, but it still seems better to have the farm code/limited entry-type restriction, where the drops start to suck *after a while* but you CAN still do the farms, (just have to have 5 or 6 different farms to rotate - which most do anyway, I bet, I know I do) than to nerf the skills themselves to kill it completely. "Lazy" or not, it would at least let people who enjoy playing a certain way do so. They just have to do other things too or the rewards sharply decline.

I farm. a lot. Everyone is taking these comments to mean that I'm throwing around farm-hate, and thats not the case. I would 10x rather see a farm code, or even limited entry, than to see SF is no longer maintainable by anyone, or the dungeons have an environmental effect that does 500pts of dmg per monk enchantment every 40 seconds, or whatever; If a rinse-repeat 'sin in ToPK invokes the farm-code, then switch to the ele and farm feathers, and when they dont drop, then switch to the 600 and so on, but without that measure then the builds are just dead. Going after the skills, or even buffing the areas with the intent of stopping a particular build is TRUE anti-farm, while putting in some limits gets the torch-and-pitchfork weilding anti-farmers to (hopefully) calm down and go on about thier lives thinking they've suceeded and done some good for the world and then hopefully shut up.

Still seems noone is answering the call of the OP and suggesting a better option than either a complete denial by killing the skill themselves or anti-build area/mob changes, VS imposing limits of some kind.
Personally I dont think we should have either one, BUT we're going to see some anti-farm action, guaranteed. So what should it be?

OH and:

and THAT was the stupidest thing IVE ever heard, limits dont mean you cant farm anymore, killing the farm skills does. LIMITED is different than CANT. Stop eating the crayons. Skill nerfs decide EXACTLY what you can and cant do, limits say how often you can do them, or how often the reward for doing them is there.

The reason limited-entry is a stupid idea is that it burns everyone, even(or especially) the supposed "casual players" that are queued up just waiting for the day UWSC is nerfed so they can delve into UW en masse... Good luck learning to finish UW if you can only enter it once a day (or, if they reach WoW-like levels of stupid, once a week). It's yet another logically inconsistent suggestion that reveals the true underlying motivation.

Bringing back the anti-farm code would probably work, except that it seems to be the exact opposite of what Anet is pushing: Farming a different small set of areas every week for some crappy trophies. Some are insanely easy (Charr hides), some less so...

Then again, I'm not entirely sure they removed the anti-farm code from the game in the first place, rather than just the notification thereof. >_>

I have to agree with you there, although I am a casual player

I can only play a few hours every week (on account of having a very lively toddler and a fiancee!) and at my current rate, I'll still be gunning for my GWAMM when I'm old and grey. Sure I could farm, but I'm not the farming type. I haven't made my way through all the content yet due to my slow rate of play.

Either way, I don't think farming is something that needs to be removed. It would be nice if there wasn't the same need for it that there is now, but that's another matter entirely. That would mean completely redesigning parts of GW to add content, sidequests and other activities, which we know ANet doesn't have the resources to do right now.

Agreed.

But, the people who create the builds that others use to farm Guild Wars are an ingenius lot. (I say it that way because many of the actual farmers that I see in the areas are decidedly NOT ingenius) There seems to always be a new way to put 8 skills on the bars and undo the area's balance. With Kathandrax I believe that the current farming method uses SF Farmers for the run and a part of the dungeon and then 600/Smite for the rest of the content. How is a not-lazy -- and I believe that Linsey is decidedly Not-Lazy -- developer to make an area balance to rewards? I seriously doubt that it is possible.

Hence my throw back to anti-farming code. You take out too much stuff from a particular area and said stuff stops dropping for you. At the same time the idea of anti-farm code is rather offensive to me, just in general. The problem being I don't see any other effective means of stemming the tide.

Personally, I would love to see Linsey do exactly as she's discussed and rework all of the elite areas. It would mean new content for me to play and I love playing new content. But in the long run I don't think it would be effective as anti-farm. Some bright boy would come up with the build, or cooperative builds, to polish it off, and then it all starts all over again. The not-lazy developer then has to start all over again too.

Maybe, if the spawns themselves were random and players never knew exactly what skills they'd be facing in an area it could work. But that's the only way that I can see an anti-farm that is based on the skill bars and AI of the monsters being effective for the long haul. Without that it seems that either anti-farming code or limited access would be the only solution. And I can't even imagine how difficult random spawns would be to implement in already developed areas.

I'm hoping one of those ingenius, bright boys can come up with a solution that I have never considered and show me how I'm wrong in my assumptions.

Edited to add:

I wish people would stop ridiculously assuming that I am somehow against farming. I am not advocating the end of farms. I'm one of those people that keep score by using my titles, and I know how expensive they can be. But, the people that keep score using the tally of the money/ecto they have acquired are just as viable, in my mind, as title hunters, or the people who keep score by buying shiny stuff and looking good. Farming is required for all of those things.

The thing is, according to a quote on an Aug. 7 post on her talk page, Linsey is planning to do something to cut the effectiveness of 600/smite teams, SF farmers and, in PvP, MB Eles. She was quoted as saying that she would prefer to change the elite areas to make the SF builds less viable in those areas rather than simply nerfing SF, but that she was considering nerfing 600/Smite. Since I do farm and I don't want 600/Smite to go away completely I started thinking about other things that might be viable instead. That's the point of the thread. It is absolutely not, "OMG Farmers suck 'cause I can't do it, boo-hoo-hoo!"

Ideas. Ideas are the point of the thread. What could happen to allow a maintainable SF to still exist and to allow 600/Smite to still exist while at the same time limiting massive influx of new gold to the game?

One way to stop solo farming at least: the area boss level on party size... so when you are alone, the enemies REALLY get tough. That or give them some form of non spell based enchantment removal.

I don't understand. Do players who don't do UWSC think that if the build is nerfed then all of a sudden noobs and inexperienced players are gonna get in balanced groups with all the old UWSCers?

There is literally nothing stopping someone from doing old skool UW now and there won't be anything encouraging more people to do it if UWSC is nerfed. Experienced players will still be in experienced groups.

On a side note. So assume SF gets nerfed. Anyone remember the old Obby fFlesh clears? Those might come back.

the funny thing about this is all the dungeons are being runned by the monks and people pay for them. I guess it is kinda faster being run instead of playing with that gruop. But the main thins is " DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IS IT TO GET DECENT PLAYERS" to make a group? there is always some noobs there. And I dont mind noobs cuz we all once were but.... those who dont listen and just screw the whole group over by agroing everything to the monk... And do you know how hard it is to get a MONK!!......

And UWSC applies for the above too......

would love to be able to do dungeons and elite areas the normal way...

Actually the random, or somewhat random spawn idea isnt bad, as long as it wasnt done like Proph bosses, where people just re-zone until they get the spawn they want...make the same enemies spawn every time but have a preset list of builds for them, and they get a new one each time.
That could be fun to play against.

that will make it really hard for monks to deal with areas....

I'm not a fan of either farming or paid dungeon runs. To me, turning the game into a job (farming) seems wrong, as in not fun. Paying someone else to play the game (hiring a dungeon runner) also seems ... wrong.

Admittedly, I have done some farming in order to max my drunkard, kurzick, and lucky titles, but I don't intend to spend time on other "grind" or money-based titles such as luxon, treasure hunter, wisdom, sweet tooth, and party animal now that my GWAMM is done. At this point, I only really do farming to get items for Nicholas the Traveler.

My vote would be to somehow nerf the areas that are overfarmed rather than attempting to nerf the farming builds themselves.

It's wasted effort really. There are good intentions but I don't see the point. Look at the PvE skills we have, the consumables. If you rework a zone taking those into account you'll probably end up with something that resembles the Domain of Anguish on hard mode. It's a very restrictive area for a creative mind with a murderous difficulty level... until you throw on consumables and PvE skills. Then it's a one hour farm.

It's a perfectly acceptable system provided there are other things to do. People enjoy grinding the same content over and over again, there's no debating that, so keep that option available. Personally my favorite loot system favors Diablo II where the drop frequency and health of the enemy scales according to the number of players in the game. However it was designed with the idea in mind that a single player can complete all of the content on their own so adapting such a system wouldn't work as well.

I would agree fully with keeping that option available, hell I would prefer things like they are now, but I think the point is that the winds of change are a-blowing, whether we like them or not - as previously stated, Linseys talk page pretty specifically says they are going to go after some of these builds current usage. she does say she would prefer to do it by re-working the areas theyre used in, instead of nerfing the skills themselves - which is good, but I dont think we're going to escape the axe, whatever form it comes in, so the OP's question is a very good one. I think several folks took it as farmhate, when it seems to me to be more about how to accomplish the dev's goals and still not kill the farmer's playstyle.

I like the idea of only being able to open the elite chests once per 24 hour period. But, that doesn't really stop solo farming of other areas like raptors and vermin areas. So, it goes back to another idea someone had that if you use SF or 55 monk or 600 smite build while farming there will be no drops. Seems simple enough in idea, don't know how hard it would be to code. Of course my idea is still valid as well. You can only use 1 rune of each calibur per character + rune of vigor of any size. So, that would mean only 1 superior, 1 major and 1 minor rune + any rune of vigor. That would pretty much end the 55 monk for sure.

I do UWSC, DTSC, SoO Dungeon runs, Raptor Farm, and pay for certain dungeons to be ran sometimes. I don't understand the reason for this thread. There is nothing wrong with running or farming. Farming/Running is a choice, you don't have to pay someone else to do it for you, you still have the option to make a balanced group and do these things. Just cause the majority of everyone else is paying doesn't mean the game should be changed to fit your balanced group needs. Hell I'd like more loot to drop and more solo areas to farm myself but you don't see me starting threads about my own little reasons for it.

LOL maybe if you had actually *read* any of the thread you would understand it. It wasnt farm-hate.

Reading Comprehension FTW!!

<tosses you a bag of Smarties>
Eat those, pray they work.

nerf nerfc nerf nerf nerf nerf
That's all that's ever said

How is removing things to do in gw or nerfing it going to improve it?
It's not like groups actually do them anymore.

Excellent! Then you are exactly the type of player I was hoping would respond to this thread! Since the developers have said they plan to do something to stop Eternal SF and 600/Smite what would be your preference? What do you think would satisfy the dev's need to affect farming, and yet still have the least negative effect on your own playstyle?

Farming is a terrible way to make money.

The Dev's don't need to do anything about the farming. It's apart of the game and will always be that way.

If SF / 600 was nerfed then I'd do my usual QQ about it, not play for a few days, come back and load the next farming build off PvX wiki. I still don't understand why these things have to be nerfed. All I see is people list ways to nerf or remove content from the game and that to me seems like moving backwards. If anything more content needs added and less restrictions should be made. The hidden reasons behind many posts here seem to be from "casual" players who are upset that other players have more gold and would like to see those players farm runs be nerfed.

The "reason" farming needs to be "dealt" with, is all the griefers out there. 55's were hated, they got nerfed, UB was hated, it got nerfed. Now SF and 600/smite is taking away from people's fun, so the "nerf it" call went out. What will be next? The build that replaces SF and 600/smite?

I know the OP is looking for suggestions to "lighten" the nerf hammer. How about, once a week, if you have less than 300k on your account (in storage and on characters) when you log in, you get 200k. Do you think people will quit worrying about how everyone makes money? Probably not. There will always be the vocal minority out there.

There are times when the powers that be, should ignore the vocal minority.

You still missed the point. Its not anyone here saying the devs SHOULD do something about farming - its the devs who said they ARE going to.
Its not "players who are jealous of farmers" posting - I AM a farmer. The question is: WHEN they do nerf these builds, whats the best way for them to do it and not kill the farms completely?

if you lower the cash income of farming builds, you'll have to higher the general income, because there's an insane amount of cash already in game

nerfing farming builds without deeply changing in game mechanics would be a terrible mistake

Whoever wants to nerf what, there will always the same thing in mind: Speed clear, farming, Gimmick Builds. Seeing how far the game went I'd prefer keeping farming as it is.


Conclusion: farming and builds are running in circles.

Where they nerfed RoJ > MoP came in.

Too late, they already nerfed farming by introducing rate of kill scaling. So unless you farm loot nerf exempt items the problem is already solved.

The problem was never farming, but professional gold selling farmers. And those bots got a lot more popular after every anti-farming drive, because all that happened was that money became more valuable to players. Finally, NC got around to banning them (remember all the threads asking why they never did anything about the districts full of bots?) so all the anti-farm rubbish is now not needed.

Farming is also the most casual player friendly activity you can do. No time commitment, easy, solo etc. If you only have 15-30 mins available to play, you can't do anything in GW other than farm. For many people with commitments, kids etc. Forming up in a pug to do a mission or dungeon, or some PvP is simply not an option.

Fixed it for you. Two great reasons to farm:

1) You're too poor to trade items of real value.
2) You enjoy it.

But you're correct that you'll never become one of the game's wealthiest players by farming, regardless of the number of hours invested. Similar to IRL.

Yeah, thats exactly what I want... a game that limits when and how I can play it. Even better, why don't we just make it so that you can only log on for 15 minutes on tuesdays and have the server down all other times? That would be awesome. </sarcasm>

Seriously, let people play how they want to play. If you have a problem with it.. QUIT!

Scale the probability of rare drops (i.e. exclusive/desirable drops) from end chests to the duration of the time required by a team to complete the area, with caps at either end.

Let's look at Fissure of Woe for an example. Let's say that the reward scaling is capped at 45 minutes on the low end and 3 hours on the high end. The team that finishes in 3 or greater hours will have 4x the chance of getting an Obsidian Edge from the Chest of Woe. Skilled teams will use this to kill every creature in the instance and collect as much loot as possible thus reaping further rewards, whereas less skilled teams are still rewarded for their efforts, but not as much. On the other hand, a speed clear team that finishes in 30 minutes will have a significantly smaller chance at rares, but if they can beat the low-cap, can farm the end chest more efficiently. Statistically speaking, it would take 4 runs of under 45 minutes to get the same rare potential as the slower team. Still, if you can beat the cap, as in the 30 minutes example, in the same 3 hour time frame, you get 1.5 times the chance at the rare from the end chest at the cost of the normal loot from the instance.

Sure, it's far from perfect, but it's an idea that (if well balanced) would encourage and allow different playstyles. It encourages speed clear teams to go faster and compete at the most efficient "clear" mechanism, but it also encourages normal teams to take their time, completely clear the area, or even just enjoy the scenery.

As I understand it, the main motivation for nerfing farming is not to grief the farmers, but to better balance the PvE game economy. If a farmer's income is more than several times that of someone not focused on farming, that's considered bad for the game in general. One way to balance it is to boost income for "normal" play (which has been done to some extent), and the other is to nerf farming.

This would not work at all. Speed Clear teams could simply zone in, AFK at the beginning for 2.5 hours, and then clear it through and get 4x the drops. Sure, it would reduce the number of "runs" per day, but there would still be the same amount of cash coming out.

I think you're missing the point. There's a cap, so "slow farming" wouldn't be profitable. With what you suggested, the speed clear team in question would actually be less profitable than a newb team that clears the whole area at a consistent pace and gathers end rewards.

(1) Any "daily quota" would result in people with more accounts having the advantage to put 100% of their spare time into their farmgrinding effort. That effect is already bad enough with Xunlai betting.

(2) If the number of times you are able to start an instance is limited to once a day, pugging these areas will end right there, due to the risk of wasting a whole day with bad pugs.

The smartest thing on my books would be to introduce an item affecting the lootdrop rate, while at the same time destroying the ability to solofarm or speedclear things. That way teamplayer get the reward, not solists. The real money making farm builds rely on a +20% enchantment duration, so that is the slot the +20% loot upgrade has to go.

Playing as a team yields only 12.5% of the loot a solofarmer makes. So even if the +20 loot upgrade stacks across multiple players to a whopping +160% loot for the party, then each player still only makes 20% of the solofarmer. So in order to close the insanely huge gap regular groups have in contrast to solofarmers, even higher numbers can be thrown around.

With such a system tank and spank Permasin groups would then be a ubiquitous pest, at which point one can see that changes to farming and the loot system tend to get out of hand rather quickly and might prove to be too much work for the LiveTeam.

No. Just no. This will give tons of gold to people with multiple accounts as if Xunlai wasn't already enough (forget that is is down). Also it would encourage lazyness (why do I need to make gold? in a couple days the game will give me it!).