Creative Anti-Farming

From what I understood of the farming nerf plans they weren't trying to nerf farming enemies in particular, it was more trying to reduce the speed at which people can clear high end/elite areas and reap the rewards from the end chests.

To that understanding, limiting the opening of end area chests to once per day is a great idea to remedy this. Once per day per character sounds reasonable, reseting at the same time as the zaishen quests/missions each day. This would hopefully encourage people to vary their farming a bit, so instead of farming UW or the one dungeon all night they would do a UWSC, then speed clear like 5 different dungeons or something.

Benefit? it creates greater viability of forming parties for different parts of the game and rewards players who are more than just one-trick ponies (ie. can do UWSC and nothing else). Sure, if a players wants to do UWSC and open the chest 20 times a day, they can create 20 sins and do it in the same way, but that would be at the cost of the use of other character slots just for farming. Spend money to make money.

People who want their little bit of fun farming each day can still do it. I'm not against farming, and do my fair share when I'm feeling lazy, but this seems like the most viable option to reduce overfarming of individual areas.

The point I was trying to make, no matter what you do, even give them free gold, someone will have something to bitch about.

I recently filled my necro's Master Dungeon Guide. No speed clears. Mostly H/H. I'd look at the wiki page for a particular dungeon, see what the end chest might drop, and think, ooh! Maybe I'll get one of those!

It soon reached the point where I was pretty much astounded if I was lucky enough to get something out of an end chest that wasn't vendor trash. In some cases I got better drops on the way to the dungeon.

So, yeah. I can understand why people would want to Speed Clear these things. Furthermore, if they can do so and get lucky with the end chests, I say MORE POWER TO THEM.

^This... That's honestly what killed EotN for me out of the gate... The dungeons are too long and too annoying (not too "hard" or too "challenging") and the rewards invariably suck, except for a micropercentage chance of a BDS or VS or something... Only reasons I'll even go into them now are a) Guildie team needs an FS ranger b) I'll buy a run if it's the Z-bounty or c) I feel like wasting a metric asston of time trying to get my last 50k delver points...

I like this idea. No, it isn't perfect, but it is viable. It doesn't stop people from clearing as many times as they want to, the way limiting the number of times opening the end chest does; and it still lets people that are farming reputation points for titles by using books continue in their endeavors. It's cleaner, and gives the players more choice in their own playstyle. Even we anti-social, solo types aren't so completely hurt by it.

It's a nice option and it shows that there are still NEW ways to skin this cat (and keep it skinned) without just killing the builds.

I don't understand all the anti-farming hate. I think Guild Wars is totally unique in that all stats for all equipment is easily obtainable by the most basic of players. It is usually only the skin of an item that makes it desirable.

I like how I do not have to play for days and days in order to get the weapon with stats that I want. I loooove that fact that I can concentrate on playing the game and not have to kill something over and over just to get the item I want.

I always look back to Diablo 2 and its horrible item drop rates on stuff that actually had game changing stats. I would farm bosses for days hoping to get that on unique that would change everything by making me stronger. I hated it with a passion and thought it was horrible game design. But that is how Blizzard addicts its players to their games. Its the old carrot-on-a-stick routine. There is always that hope of getting a super drop that keeps you coming back for more and more.

Guild Wars broke that trend by making everything stat changing item readily available for minimal effort.

So why all the hate for farmers and the skills that allow farming? In my opinions it doesn't break the game at all. Most farmers are building up cash to buy skins, not game breaking, high stat items like was found in Diablo 2. I never understood why Anet put the loot scale in place. I think it harms the average player more that it actually stopped farmers.

I am an average player who also loathes the drop rate on the end chests in dungeons. I get sooooo pissed off after spending sometimes longer than an hour in a dungeon and all I get is some [email protected] gold item that is total crap and it doesn't even have max stats. The hate is especially compounded in Hard Mode. The reward should match the effort. I should not get a shit purple weapon that sells for 150g out of a Hard Mode chest that I spent 1.5k on the key just to open it. F'ing ridiculous.

If you want to change something change the EFFORT, NOT the reward. Make it harder for me to clear a Dungeon but don't make the rewards even harder to obtain! Do that I'll just never go there again and if no one goes in then that area is a complete waste of the developers time and money. I feel this way about all the games I play. Don't make me spend hours to complete something in the game and then toss me a reward that does not match the effort.

So regarding the Speed Clears, I have mixed emotions about it. Do I think the UW should be done in 10 minutes? NO. But do I think I should spend 2 hours clearing it to get some shit gold item? NO. I can totally see why people do speed clears. they don't want to spend 2 hrs just to get a crap drop. So they found a way to speed up the process. Good for them. Want to make it fair? Then developers should always make the reward match the effort and the effort match the reward.

EDIT: I just saw FengShuiDove's post and this goes along well with what I am saying about effort=reward. small effort doing a fast clear nets less of a reward. more time and effort? Better the reward.

Sorry, I misread your post somehow to mean 4x drops in the whole dungeon, which makes no sense whatsoever...

In that case, it seems viable. I like how it encourages normal clears instead of discouraging speed clears.

Oh I thought you were being totally serious with suggestion lol.

If I'm not mistaken, the live team's big concern is not solo farming, but speed clears and team farms, and it might be wise of us to consider the two things differently.

Linsey and others have repeatedly said that solo farming is a viable play mode, and that skills in the game which contribute to solo farming will likely remain untouched. This is why RoJ now causes scatter, and why Charged Blackenesses have shock, and why Shadow Form remains untouched.

The concern is, as several people here have noted, the speed clears that zip through dungeons rapidly, or that clear out all the creatures in a supposedly elite area, in a matter of minutes, all in the intent of getting goodies from an end chest.

Hitting a skill clearly seems to be problematic: while nerfing 600-smite SKILLS (i..e. Spell Breaker or Prot Spirit) might succeed in slowing team clears and runs, it would also crimp solo farms involving me and a hero, or two-person farms that do contribute meaningfully to the economy (lookin' at you, feather farm). Nerfing Shadow Form would alter VS farms and UW speed clears, but it would also damage those solo farmers hanging in the chaos planes for a handful of ecto, or killing baby raptors for party and festival items.

So, for the rest of this post, I won't address SOLO or DUAL farms (i.e. those designed to farm areas for loot, gold, holiday items, etcc), but will instead address the team farms and speed clears. I think Solo farms need to be left alone, because they contribute to titles (as several people have said) and because their impact on the economy is less significant than the team speed clears.

The last couple of nerfs suggested one way to think about the team clears: hitting the skills that the damage dealers use after a tank has gathered aggro: Cry of Pain took a little swat, and Ray of Judgement now causes scatter, which can slow a team down a little bit. However, as people noted, FoC works well, as do other mass damage skills. Will FoC see a swat? Maybe.

One thing that few people addressed here--someone did, in suggesting randomized mobs--is the selection of enemies in these areas, and the skillsets they use.
1. Grenth's Aura can remove SF.
2. Soulrending Shriek (a monster skill used by Incubi in dungeons and EotN) can remove SF
3. Signet of Disenchantment will remove SF

To combine ideas with another poster above: The game could run a check as you enter a dungeon or Elite area like UW. If party size is two or less (or three?), then none of these skills appear. If party size is greater than two or three, then monsters may carry these skills.

If the check is too complicated, then this could be randomized: sometimes a spawn will have it, sometimes a spawn won't have it. In cases of UWSCs, perhaps taking a quest AFTER "Clear the Chamber" would trigger this: doorways to each area of UW would be guarded by mobs carrying one or more of the above skills. This last little bit would allow solo farming and even team farming of the AREAS of UW, but might slow down the groups and preclude farming of the end chest.

More critters with Hexbreaker, Hex Eater Signet, and Hex removal skills. More balanced groups of foes.

Also, considering the team makeups of these farms, could the monsters be buffed in terms of armor against certain TYPES of damage? I.E. buff creatures in parts of UW and FoW to be resistant to elemental damage. Make FoC NOT Shadow Damage (which is armor-ignoring), but cold damage or dark damage instead.

Alter some exploited constructions and maps: Why is Thommis the farmed one for VS? Because he spawns near a wall and door; the perma can pull him closer, and the whole team can zap him and his group from there. Once his mob is dead, the doors open and people can stroll to the chest.
It's a nice big dungeon, why does he pop where he does? Move him into another room in that complex and the VS farm takes a little longer for each team.

Environmental effects, like in Urgoz, DoA and Realm of Torment. Enchantments take longer to cast, cost more energy, run out sooner. Spirit effects, like EW or QZ.

So, none of these would break a game. some of these require more coding than others. Some would alter the team clear landscape notably, and some would not. Some would very quickly be beaten by smarter gamers than I.

Here's my problem after posing all these, and after reading all our ideas:

WHY should team clears take a hit? After all, they: add to HoM. Fill a gap in the economy and bring down the prices of shiny toys. Allow more people access to "money" and ecto. Allow for "fun" gaming. Create opportunities for "team" play. Involve people in elite areas and dungeons. Help people fill in Hard Mode Handbooks. Add to titles. Get people cute little spider pets. Make Mesmers a viable class. Give monks something to do other than heal or prot. give people money and ecto to trade for a dwindling supply of Z-keys. And more.

Just my two cents. The real problem here is that in GW as in WoW, the best elite items are squirreled away on some annoying boss in the bottom of some time-consuming and tedious dungeon or in an even more tedious elite area. In both games, this was not always so.

The result of the devs taking all the best loot "down below" has been to generate the professional farmers and dedicated amateur farmers. Let's leave them alone; they are doing what is reasonable and what they like. They are having fun. Fine with me.

What needs to be done for casual players in GW is simple and easy for ANet to do. Very similar to what WoW has done. Just increase the monster drop rate in general explorables for perfect gold items over what it is. And the drop rate in chests. These do not have the same skins as the true elite items, but the same stats; most casual players would be happy, and there would still be a market to those players who want the fame of a name and skin. At the present time, GW is behind WoW in this.

For example, a WoW anecdote. I recently made a nostalgia return to WoW. I rolled a new Nelf Hunter and with the help of my memory of the game, QuestHelper and Cartographer, got him up to level 70 in just three weeks. And that's with full mining and herbalism thrown in, plus cooking, first aid, and even some fishing. Scary. I still remember where all the herb and mining pops are. Oh, and his Cat and Bear were both elite pets. No cutting corners!

My stinking rich Druid gave the new hunter 50g to get started, and kicked in 20 slot bags. Other than that the new hunter was on his own. By the time he went to buy his Elite Flying Mount and pay for the flight training to go with it, he had 11,000 g liquid -- most of it from selling ore, metal bars, and herbs. Plus a bit of Auction House smart trading. Plus a few lucky drops along the way.

I did this all as a "casual player." No instances, no pugs. Just solo out all alone with my hair blowing in the breeze. I was very pleased with the gear from quests and from drops along the way. Plus, with hundreds of g popping out of the mail every day, a few nice items from the AH were always affordable.

GW only needs to make life similarly easy and rewarding for casual players and the farming arguments evaporate.

Hard mode does this already, and farmers can get one every 2-5 minutes if not faster. I could run out right now and be back in less than 5 minutes with a "rare" gold max weapon. Max weapons are easy to obtain for people like me who don't care about the skin(/bonus, BMP, collectors, crafters, greens). If you do care about skins, the inscription system is casual friendly. Any max weapon with an inscription slot can be "perfect."

"Rare" is only a text color change and an increased merchant value now. Although some weapons may only drop as a rare, and some of those only in certain areas, that is true. A rare weapon also has a higher perceived value for some players.

MisterB, you are right. I should have said normal mode explorables. Yes, I have some farming builds and I do a bit of casual farming when the mood strikes me. I was thinking more of casual players who are leveling up for the first time and for whom Hard Mode farming is not an option.

What stands out to me about 600/Smite is how the damage in the build is applied. It's high amount of mirror-damage that's very easily maintainable at essentially no cost, and depends on monsters behaving in a way that any half-smart real-life player would learn their lesson against after a few minutes.

I agree, it should still be viable as a farming skill, but I don't think it should be able to clear entire dungeons as reliably as it can right now. Farming is farming, but mission running (not to be confused with outpost running) I feel is a different class of issue.

The linch-pin skills of this build are Protective Spirit, Spirit Bond, Retribution + Holy Wrath, and energy management skills like Essence Bond, Balthazar's Spirit, and Signet of Devotion. If one or two of these skills were removed, the build would be no more, which is not what I want to have happen. Peripheral skills improve your chances of survival, like Life Attunement, Spell Breaker, Shield of Deflection, etc. These help when needed, but can be replaced by other skills in many pure farming situations.

There are a handful of ways to make a build feel tighter, or limit ways to push it closer to the brink. One of the trickiest things when talking about 600/Smite is that it's a duo build, but that is commonly overcome by using a Smiter Hero. The build they use have to either be incredibly passive, else they need to be micro'd very skillfully. An opportunity could be found in PvE-only skills which Heroes can't use, like Pain Inverter, Air of Superiority, Selfless Spirit, and some damage buffing skills like "By Ural's Hammer!", or constant timing-dependent skill usage that is tricky to micro like maintaining Ether Renewal with Glyph of Swiftness.

In the build, both monks tend to limit how much they cast on each other to reduce risk of pulling the agro off of the 600. Introducing a need to have one player cast on another at a regular interval would help things along.

Here's my change:

Holy Wrath
-1> 10/2/10
Enchantment Spell. While you maintain this Enchantment, whenever target ally takes attack damage, this Spell deals 66% of the damage back to the source (maximum of 5...41...50 damage), and you lose 2 Energy. This enchantment ends if either you or the target reaches 0 energy.

I would have really loved to have this skill with this functionality at 1 energy, but then you could easily counter it Essence Bond, and in that case, it behaves in a similar way, but at the cost of 1 pip of energy. This also denies the 600 the use of Essence Bond, having then to rely on energy gained only from Balthazar's Spirit. Remember that you can't have multiple copies of the same maintained enchantment on one person.

With this change, the build works as usual, but energy consumption can't outwieght energy gain. There is a base energy consumed by enchants being cast regularly and maintained upkeep with a variable cost of how many times you're being hit, which is partially funded by Essence Bond and Balthazar's Spirit. Spirit Bond can end early if you are hit too many times, forcing an early re-cast. Essentially, agro must be limited to keep either player from going bankrupt.

Energy must be regenerated somehow, and this can be done in a handful of ways, each posing unique risks, custom of what zone you're in. You could have the Smiter maintain Ether Renewal, at the cost of some of your damage output, and a Hero can't be used in that way easily. You could put Blood is power on the 600 to help keep the Smiter afloat, but then the 600 can't use Channeling, which would be very helpful. Alternatively, you could have the Smiter rely on Soul Reaping as a Necromancer primary, and find a risk-reward balance of killing things and having things killed, with peppered Signet of Lost Souls uses.

Am I overlooking something?

Yo, READ what I quoted before quote me you egghead. The OP was saying he wants/favors restrictions like if you opened the UW chest once, you have to wait a day before you can open it again, which stops people from farming the UW via uwsc again and again. I was saying you can change the function of certain skills(some calls it "nerf"), adding new enemies, shift the environment where certain quests takes place etc. But you can't limit or control what the players want to do in the game. You can limit farming by adding enemies that would counter farming builds used to farm that area, you can put in environmental effects that will create a challenge for people who wishes to farm there. But you can not limit how a player spends his time on the game, you can make it challenging for him/her to do certain things(in this case farming), but you can't make it a limit for him/her to do certain things, especially when better solutions are readily available.


But let's face it, you can't do much(money wise) by playing the conventional way, you NEED to farm if you wanna get anything done in the game, be it getting titles or buy some high end weapon.

They could restrict the loot and end chest rewards depending on the time you needed to finish minus the time you just stood/run around without anything happening divided by the time a certain skill was active. The closer the ratio gets to 1 the less rewards you get.

So people could still use those skills to finish content and fill up books, but they wouldn´t get more rewards then a balanced group.

After that fix the ridiculous high numbers you need to finish some titles.

QFT.

The other solutions make gameplay seem even more drab and hopeless. Games shouldn't be boring. SCs are completely normal, but the GW population is just no used to seeing thoughtful organized P2P teams as a norm because of the terrible system that is H/H.

That right there win's this thread.They can nerf SF or 600/smite or an other farming build on PvX. But sooner or later some idiot will come up with a new way to do it whether it be faster or slower than the old way.Besides if Anet nerfed these farming methods, half the farmers would,

A.) quit the game because now they can't make 100k a day
B.) spend there millions of virtual money on useless shyt
C.) now call me crazy but maybe just maybe they would play the game?

Here is a good example. While doing the z-bounty the other day, there was a monk in the outpost. Level 10 with no secondary with protector of tyria. Now as if this isn't enough this player also had chaos gloves AND deldrimor armor. My group was full of idiots and they kept pinging their name and saying''wow guys look that guy'', ''dam must be a pro''. At this point i said''Well its not impressive people, just someone who farms all day and has nothing better to do with their money''. Now after i said that they called me an idiot and INSISTED that this person was better than sliced bread. But I'm drifting. Fact of the matter is, most GW players log on just to farm and have millions upon millions.Whatever happened to playing the game/enjoying the game must have left their minds when Shadow Form/600/smite/any other farming build is discovered.As for speedclears i only have one thing to say.

NERF.

So its alll about farming for the money...

Whats amusing is not only where people getting free money every month via XTH, they still feel the need to defend keeping broken builds/farms so they can farm more money for titles/vanity items that have no ingame effect outside looking pretty.

If you're farming money for your titles, you do realise that the rewards in Guildwars 2 for maxing these titles has not been set in stone yet. I find it even more funny that people refuse to do stuff in game unless the reward justifies it but are more then willing to sink hundreds, if not thousands of hours for a reward that might be so not worth it in Guildwars 2.

But hey, screw the balance of the game as long as you get to max those title's that nobody cares about, or get that pretty item that everyone else has, keep grinding away like the little drones you are. Just remember if you don't like Guildwars 2 or it tanks and fails what are you going to do?

I saw that person. Marketplace gogogo. But why would you want to silence some bored person trying to make a statement? It's equivalent to saying, "Hey he's wearing a red shirt, I don't have a red shirt... everyone else is commenting on his red shirt, omg he needs to take red shirt off!" MMO play is about choosing your own way to go, and if you take that away, why play it?

All this talk is like a discussion about utopia. It sounds great on paper but it's terribad in practice because humans need imba dynamic, or else people get bored and worse things happen.

Personally, if they mess up perma or 600 smite builds, then I hope that anet fails miserably and goes out of business, taking GW2 with it! People play to have fun, people love to farm, people need and want runs etc. If they kill that, then as far as I am concerned, they have killed what is left of GW.
I love to farm, and I love dungeon runs, that's about all I do anymore except an occasional ZQ bounty or mission.

Farming weather it be solo or speed clears is all that is left for a LOT of people to do. All missions complete in normal and HM all areas vanquished, HoM complete. There is really nothing left to do but farm. No new areas to explore, no new scenery to find. I dont do the speed clears myself, I prefer the solo farm, take my time and go at my own pace. But I dont see anything wrong with it happening for those that want to do it. And dont give me the broken economy crap. The economy sucks in both the game and RL, accept it, deal with it and move on. But leave the farmers alone. I find that those that wine and cry about the farmers are the same ones that either are to lazy to figure out a way to solo or suck so bad that they cant get into a speed clear group.

Trust me 9/10 cases a person solo farming doesn't have anything fully complete.Besides it's not impressive if you can press 1,2,3 drop a mob and make money.As for whining about farmers, yes i have done it before, but i was stating that its just TO EASY.Anyone can roll a sin or a monk and solo farm when they don't know $#@!. Speed clear's are another story, exploitable areas that Anet didn't look at much, which allowed people to finish them in 30 min.

What you said is solo farmers are dumb [because pressing keys 8-3-4 is smarter than 1-2-3] while SCers aren't.

And you want to penalize the smart players?

Then ectoplasm prices go up and I never get my Obsidian armor.

I am a Huge Farming manly for gold id for titles and a bit of cash and mats for armors and so.
If u nerf farming Guildwars will lose alot of players, making this game a bore and it will remove alot of the good players.
Yes i can 3 man urgoz and the deep but for the fact that is is pretty dang hard not many people can do it or people are willing to pay for the cons.
With out farmings people would never achive the titles like Wisdom, sweet tooth, party and drunk title cos there wouldnt be much items going around.
Now for the SC areas Do u know how many pug groups fail.
I do an average of 1-10 runs a day but almost 2 thrids fail.
Leave the farmers alone, just cos you werent smart enough to work out good builds dont mean u gotta penalise us.

This is the worst argument I have ever heard. Remove 3-manning areas that were meant for 8 or 12 people and I will quit, simply genius. That's bad and then you say not smart enough to work out good builds, like you made them... everyone and their brother can copy pvxwiki.

There's another thread asking why GW now is Grind Wars.

SCs are the opposite of grind. Sure you do it a lot but you do it faster and overall it's less time consuming than doing it the hard way. If you like the grind gg, but I hate grind games.

sry i didnt copy have u seen them posted? besides on the thread i made.
also have u farmed all your titles or brought the stuff cos most of it would have been farmed some how.
Screw anti farmers

I can't make out your mumbo jumbo you call English.

I don't think they should change farming one bit. I enjoy farming areas whether it be solo or with a couple of guildies. What Anet needs to do is implement a 7 hero system into PVE so that people that want to do balance can.

If you really want to do balanced UW with real players like the old days, contact some of the people whining about it on this thread and do it.

And too the people complaining about titles being all about grind. Titles are suppose to be hard to achieve. If they made them all not about grinding they would be ridiculously easy then the reward in GW2 might just be crap because anyone can easily get it.

Don't lie to yourself. Can you compare preorder weapons to torm sets? Absolutely not. Same with GW2 title reward vs real GW2 highend weapons. Prepare to lol.